


People Come Around

by fourteencandles (thingsbaker)



Series: Here's Us Together [4]
Category: Entourage
Genre: M/M, Turtle POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 20:10:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3742078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingsbaker/pseuds/fourteencandles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year in the life and observation of Turtle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. January: Fifteen Years

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Livejournal in 2008. No real spoilers after Season 1-2. Super thanks to Shoshannagold for her reading and listening and brainstorming during this, and for not going, "Waaait, Turtle POV, seriously?" more than once.

_Park Place_  kills at the box office over Christmas, so when they get back from Austria, Vince buys a new house, bigger than the current place, smaller than the original, but still nice. E sells his condo and the three of them move in on a Sunday. This time, they hire movers, which makes Turtle particularly happy. He chooses the last room on the second floor and is surprised when E doesn’t object, even though it’s the second nicest of the suites. Instead, E takes the first room, next to the stairs, which is small but still has its own bath. “What, you want to be able to hear my alarm clock going off?” he asks when Turtle makes a comment about the room’s size, and Turtle lets it go. E’s always been a little weird.  
  
They celebrate the new digs by going out to a new club, and they hire a driver so that Turtle can drink, too. Vince gets them in VIP and Turtle spends half the evening chatting up a blonde who manages to tear her eyes away from Vince only after two champagne martinis. It helps that Vince isn’t paying her any attention. He nurses his drinks — only has two, as far as Turtle sees, which is two more than he was drinking for a while, after his weird rehab thing — and talks mostly to E. At the end of the night, they all go home empty-handed. E’s just off a breakup, and it’s no surprise to Turtle to head home alone or to see Drama going solo, but for Vince to strike out is messed up.  
  
“Tough night, huh bro?” Drama says in the limo.  
  
Vince is sitting in the back, E next to him, while Turtle and Drama face them. He doesn’t look at all concerned as he shrugs. “I had a good time. What, Johnny, you didn’t?”  
  
“A fine time,” Drama says.  
  
“Just you ain’t the people I’d most like to be riding home with, you know?” Turtle says, and Vince laughs.  
  
“Well, I can’t think of a better crowd,” he says, throwing his arm along the back of the seat.  
  
Drama stays over in the spare room next to Turtle’s, and in the morning he cooks them all a big breakfast. Vince is the last to the table, still in his robe and shorts, while E is already dressed for work. “I’ll see you at Ari’s,” he says, sliding past Vince. He stops in the doorway and says, “And Turtle, don’t forget to call about the pool, all right?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, and waits until he hears the door close. “Jesus, that guy, we just moved in and he’s already on me.”  
  
“You did agree,” Vince says, in his usual amiable voice. “You had to know he’d stick to that.”  
  
Turtle rolls his eyes. He agreed, in a moment of weakness, to return to his salaried position as the house manager, because E said it would make Turtle’s increased allowance tax deductible. What Turtle hadn’t realized was that the job came with actual drag responsibilities.  
  
“It’s like he’s my fucking mom, sometimes, though,” Turtle says, and Vince shakes his head.  
  
“He’s fucking your mom?” Drama says. “Well, at least I got there first.”  
  
“Yeah, didn’t I see yours on the boulevard last night?”  
  
“Hey!” both brothers say, and Turtle gets a pancake in the face.  
  
He spends most of the morning reading questions out of a Trivial Pursuit TV edition for Drama, helping him prepare for his New Hollywood Squares audition, and then they drive Vince to Ari’s office just before lunch.  
  
E’s already waiting, and he gives Turtle a sharp look and glances at his watch when they roll in. “Not even two minutes,” Turtle says. “Haven’t you heard of fashionably late?”  
  
“Have you heard of professionally on time?” E asks. He pushes Vince into Ari’s office before Turtle can appeal for help.  
  
After the meeting, Vince rides with E to lunch, and then they have to go meet some producer so Turtle spends the rest of the afternoon with Drama and the trivia cards. He gets bored after a while and suggests they move their review session to a bar, which suits Drama just fine. They find a place with good draught specials and take a table in the corner, and a few college girls studying at the next table eventually join them for a full round of the game. Drama talks non-stop about his audition, and Turtle settles into a comfortable eye-rolling routine with one of the girls. For the second game, they switch up the teams so the girl, Cathy, comes to sit next to him. They stay until the place closes down, and though the girls refuse their offer of a nightcap, Cathy does give Turtle her number. He drops Drama off, then drives back home, feeling pretty pleased with himself.  
  
Arnie’s waiting at the front door when he gets in, so Turtle takes him out the back the way and lets him do his business while he finishes a joint. He sits on the deck, feeling nicely mellow, enjoying the dark quiet around their new place. The pool gurgles below and he glances up at E’s room, realizing he hasn’t called to get the chlorine guy in yet. He’ll have to do it tomorrow.  
  
Arnie brings a bone up and starts slobbering on his knee, and Turtle says, “All right, fella, time to call it a night.” He lets them both in the back way, locks up, closes Arnie into the downstairs bathroom that’s his usual home, and goes to check the front door again. E will have him for breakfast if he forgets to set the alarm. Then he grabs a bottle of water and starts for the stairs. Before he gets to the hall, though, he hears Vince’s bedroom door open, and he peeks around the kitchen door to see who’s coming out. If it’s a girl, she’ll be hot, and Turtle isn’t above catching a glimpse of Vince’s action to get himself through the night.  
  
What he sees instead is E, in just his boxer shorts, easing Vince’s bedroom door closed like he’s afraid to wake anyone. Turtle presses back against the kitchen wall and holds perfectly still until he hears E’s footsteps start on the stairs, and then he still waits a few more minutes before he goes up to bed himself. In his room, he sits on the bed and tries to think of a reason that E would be in Vince’s room, half-naked, in the middle of the night, and he’s only thought of two by the time he falls asleep.  
  


* * *

  
  
The next morning, he eliminates one possibility with a simple question. “You bring a girl home last night?”  
  
“Nah,” Vince says, stretching. “We came right back after that meeting. It was exhausting.”  
  
“Yeah, the whole two words you said must have really taken it out of you,” E says, settling across from Vince and handing him a cup of coffee. He’s smiling.  
  
Turtle tries to keep his face blank. “So what’d you do?”  
  
Vince shrugs. “Watched some TV. I took a swim and went to bed pretty early.”  
  
“I read,” E says.  
  
“Wow, you guys are lame.” Drama slides a plate of waffles onto the table.  
  
“Yeah, what’d you do that was so exciting?”  
  
“We had a stimulating evening of Trivial Pursuit with some very thoughtful, scholarly young women.”  
  
“Scholarly?”  
  
“Like naughty librarian hot,” Turtle says. “And I got a number.”  
  
“Yeah?” E asks.  
  
“Yeah,” Turtle says. He looks right at E. “Fact, we liked them so much, we were out till almost – what time did we get home, Drama?”  
  
“Must’ve been around 3 for you.”  
  
“Yeah, three, that sounds about right.”  
  
E doesn’t take the bait, though. “That’s great, guys,” he says. He turns toward Vince. “Listen, I’m going to get those things over to Shauna, then you’ve got that photo thing at 11, all right?”  
  
“Sounds good. You coming back to pick me up?”  
  
E glances at his watch. “I’ll call,” he says. As he gets up, he puts his hand on Vince’s shoulder.  
  
It’s nothing, it’s just what any of them might do, squeezing around in their little dining nook. But it feels like confirmation to Turtle, particularly when he watches Vince watch E leave the kitchen. He looks down at his waffle before Vince can catch him staring, and decides he needs to figure this out, quick.  
  
Over the next two days, he sees just about everything he needs to see. They go out that night, and while Vince does get out and dance for a while, he again leaves the club sober and empty-handed and doesn’t look disappointed. Neither, Turtle notices, does E. The next night, they stay in to watch movies and get baked – Turtle actually cancels plans with Drama to stay at the house – and Vince and E sit on the couch, next to each other but not too close, with Vince’s arm stretched out along the back. A few times, Turtle thinks he sees Vince’s fingers rub E’s neck, but they’re totally separate whenever Turtle turns their direction.  
  
There’s no one else in the house that night, but when Vince comes to breakfast the next morning, he has a mouth-shaped bruise above his collarbone, and both he and E are again in excellent moods.  
  
“How’d you get that?” Turtle asks, pointing to the bruise.  
  
“Weight machine,” Vince says without blinking. He changes shirts, to something with a closer collar, before they leave the house.  
  
That night, Vince has a costuming session downtown that runs late, so Turtle and E wait outside in the suburban. E sits in the back and taps on his Blackberry, and Turtle scans through his new CD until he finds a song he likes. “If you’re watching porn on that thing, hand it over,” he says.  
  
“I’m scheduling myself for eardrum replacement surgery, after this racket,” E says. “Jesus, can you turn it down?”  
  
Turtle rolls his eyes and leans around the seat to look back at E. “When exactly did you become an old woman, E?”  
  
“Just because –“  
  
“I mean, seriously, you’re about as much fun as my grandma, and you were at her funeral,” Turtle says. “You got that thing glued to your hand 24/7. Remember when you were a real person? Remember when you were cool, E?”  
  
E sets down his Blackberry. “You know what? At least I do my job, Turtle. At least I do the stuff I’m supposed to do to make things work for Vince. Unlike you, at least I’m fucking earning my money.”  
  
“Yeah, is that what they’re calling it these days?” he says. “You think if I was fucking Vince, I’d get to order you around?”  
  
E flinches. “What did you just say?”  
  
“That’s right,” Turtle says, pressing his advantage, which he never has over E. “I know all about you guys. I saw you the other night.” E sits back and rubs his face. “You can deny it, whatever, man, but I saw what I saw.” He turns back to face forward in the car, but keeps an eye on E in the rearview mirror. “You know it’s a mistake, right?”  
  
“Goddammit, Turtle,” E starts, shaking his head, so Turtle talks over him.  
  
“I’m just saying, I’ve known you both my whole life, and this is one very bad idea. I give it two months, tops, before Vince gets bored, you get your damn heart broken again, and life is hell for us all.”  
  
Vince opens the door before E can respond, and he slides into the passenger’s seat. He looks from E to Turtle and back. “What?”  
  
E clears his throat. His glare could almost melt the rearview mirror, before he turns to Vince. “Nothing. How’d it go?”  
  
“All right,” Vince says, shrugging. He turns to face E, and Turtle has no choice but to start the car and get moving. “You wouldn’t believe the outfit, E. It’s sick.”  
  


* * *

  
  
The next day, Turtle gets the guy in to clean the pool, watches him do the work, test the chemicals, all of that. After he’s done, Turtle stays outside, because he’s afraid of being caught alone with E. They didn’t talk about it at all after they got home, and Turtle isn’t even sure that Vince knows he knows yet. Then again, there’s a lot of stuff between E and Vince that Turtle wouldn’t have guessed before this week.  
  
Around noon, Vince comes out and sits in the lounge chair next to him. Turtle doesn’t look over, but does accept the joint when Vince passes it.  
  
“Fifteen years,” Vince says, and then Turtle does look over.  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
“That’s how long me and E have been, well, me and E,” Vince says. He’s looking straight ahead, at the pool. “Since high school.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Turtle says, and Vince shakes his head. It takes Turtle a second to catch his breath. “Seriously, all this time?”  
  
Vince takes the joint back, draws in a long breath of it, then exhales. “Off and on,” he says.  
  
“And right now, what, you’re on?”  
  
Vince shrugs. “We’re trying something new.”  
  
“Spell it out,” Turtle says, almost coughing as he blows out smoke.  
  
Vince nods, holding the joint in his hand but not toking. “We’re trying it, not just fucking around.”  
  
Turtle takes the joint and another drag. “So that’s why no girls, recently?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Turtle stubs out the joint on the glass table. Vince is still looking at the pool, so Turtle looks, too. “Lemme guess,” he says. “E wanted more, huh?”  
  
Vince shrugs, then after a moment, says, “Actually, I did.” Turtle looks over, and Vince meets his eye. His smile is a little sheepish. “After he broke up with Gillian, I kind of, uh, I wanted more,” he says. He looks back at the house, and so Turtle does, too. E is sitting on deck rail, talking on his cell phone, his back to them. Turtle looks at Vince looking at E, and his stomach turns, a nervous twist. Vince looks back at him. “You OK with this?”  
  
It’s Turtle’s turn to shrug. He’s known these guys his whole life, and he has no idea how this has happened. “I’ll get used to it,” he says, after a minute. “It’s just – weird, you know?”  
  
“I guess,” Vince says. His voice is quiet. “It doesn’t seem that weird, though. I mean, it’s E.”  
  
He looks back up at the house, and waves, and Turtle looks up to see E waving back. A minute later, he’s down next to them, standing to the side of Vince’s chair.   
  
“Are we cool?” he asks.  
  
Vince looks at Turtle, and Turtle looks from him to E and then back. “We’re cool,” he says, and E nods and then so does Vince. When Vince stands up, he stands close to E, and his hand rests on E’s hip just for a second while he tells him something in a low voice. Turtle looks away.  
  
“The pool looks good, Turtle,” E says after a minute. He looks over, again, and Vince is heading back to the house. E is looking down at him with his usual hard business eyes, but there’s a twitch at the edge of his mouth.  
  
“Yeah, thanks,” Turtle says. He shades his eyes, but keeps looking up. “I still think it’s a bad idea,” he says.  
  
E sighs. “Probably,” he says, his arms crossed. “But it’s the only one we’ve got.”


	2. February: He's not the only one

After that, things return pretty much to normal. Vince still doesn’t take girls home, but Turtle figures that frees up a few more for him. E still bitches about things not getting done around the house, but Vince doesn’t always take his side. And the two of them still act the same as always, so much so that Turtle starts to think it’s a little weird, maybe he’s made it up. Then they have a few beers, one night, and Drama leaves because he’s got an early call. Vince walks him out, and when he comes back, he lays down on the couch and puts his head in E’s lap.  
  
Turtle watches E’s hand hover, mid-air, and sees E looking at him. Vince glances over. “This all right?” he asks.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, quickly. “I mean, I know now. You guys don’t have to work so hard to keep up the act.”  
  
“Yeah?” Vince says, and Turtle sees the hope and gratitude in his eyes and feels bad.  
  
“You know, don’t start humping each other’s legs in front of me, but yeah,” he says.  
  
E laughs. His hand lands on Vince’s shoulder. “Damn, and I was really hoping to get my hump on.”  
  
It’s not too weird, Turtle tells himself, although it is, especially when he looks over and sees E rubbing Vince’s neck, his fingers underneath the collar of Vince’s T-shirt.  
  
The next morning, E comes out of Vince’s room just as Turtle’s hitting the last stair. He’s wearing boxers and a T-shirt, and his hair is still sleep-rumpled. Turtle looks at E, then at the kitchen. “Does Drama know?” he asks, very quietly.  
  
E shakes his head and yawns. “He’s filming all day,” he says.  
  
“Shouldn’t you tell him?” he asks, seeing Vince padding down the hallway. Vince has on his robe, cinched at the waist.  
  
“The fewer people who know, the better,” E says, just as Vince reaches them. He smiles sleepily at Turtle, doesn’t touch E, and ducks into the kitchen. Turtle follows.  
  
“I’m just saying, it’s kind of whack, your own brother doesn’t know,” Turtle says, taking down a mug while E reaches for the coffee.  
  
“Johnny knows,” Vince says from the table.  
  
E turns, the coffee filter-pod still in his hand. “What? Since when?”  
  
“A few years ago,” Vince says. “When we were at Tahoe, I think. At least, I think he knows. We had this weird talk about, like, gay rights and Actors’ Equity and stuff.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean he knows,” E says. His grip on the coffee pod threatens to tear it open, and Turtle reaches over to save it.  
  
Vince looks over. “He also said he wouldn’t tell Ma,” he says, and Turtle watches E flinch. “What, he’s cool with it.”  
  
Turtle shakes his head and turns on the coffeemaker. It gurgles to life and he looks around for the sweetener. “Man, I can’t believe he knew and he didn’t tell me,” he says. E pulls a bag of bagels out of the pantry and drops three into the toaster. Turtle turns. “I can’t believe you guys didn’t tell me.”  
  
Vince frowns. E seems to be concentrating very intently on the toaster. “We weren’t sure how you’d take it,” Vince says. “And besides, it was always pretty, ah, casual, before this.”  
  
Turtle turns back to the brewing. He knows exactly what Vince’s definition of a casual relationship looks like, and it’s a very different definition than E’s. He wonders whose definition of serious they’re trying out.  
  
When the coffee is finished, he pours three cups and carries them over to the table, where E spreads out their bagels and a tub of cream cheese. “So how long’s ‘this’ been going on?” Turtle asks, making air quotes.  
  
E glances at Vince. “Two months?”  
  
“Since you and Gillian broke up.”  
  
“So closer to three,” E says. “Which means we’ve survived your prediction, Turtle.”  
  
Vince looks up from his bagel. “Three months?”  
  
“Two.” Turtle shrugs. “I didn’t know you had a history,” he says, and concentrates on his own breakfast.  
  
The next day, he mentions it to Drama while they’re driving over to a meeting at Ari’s, Vince and E ahead in E’s car. “You knew about this?” he says.  
  
“Eh,” Drama says. “I accidentally overheard them one night when we were camping out at Tahoe.”  
  
“Overheard them… having sex?” Turtle says. “Wait, don’t answer that, I don’t want to think about it.”  
  
“What’s the big deal?” Drama says. “I mean, Jesus, I thought E was a fairy the first time I met him, and he’s still a fucking cool guy.”  
  
“E’s not the only one,” Turtle says. “He’s fucking your brother.”  
  
Drama just shrugs. “More girls for us,” he says. “You know, in a way, I kind of envy them. I mean, a guy with a guy, that’s gotta be almost perfect. You want sex, he wants sex – no headaches, no periods, no waiting.”  
  
Turtle has a hard time keeping his eyes on the road. When he manages to get his mouth closed again, he says, “Drama, let’s never talk about this again,” and turns up the radio.


	3. MARCH: Cross-Genre Appeal

Vince’s last movie,  _Park Place_ , makes a major dollar debut on DVD and they decide to have a guys’ night to celebrate. Turtle’s not sure what that means; anymore, they’re all guys’ nights, because Vince turns all the girls down, E’s stopped his serial dating, and he and Drama aren’t getting anywhere just as fast as always. But Vince says, “Tonight, guys’ night!” at breakfast so Turtle says he’s down.  
  
They go to a bar that has a moss-covered fountain at one end and a volcano spewing red and orange lights at the other. In between, there are two bars and about two hundred hot shots. They take a table in the middle, a good table, and E goes up to get the first round because he’s lost some kind of bet with Vince.  
  
“Do we want to know?” Turtle asks, and Vince shrugs.  
  
“We had a bet about who could impersonate Lloyd on the phone better,” Vince says. “I got Ari to drive to a meeting at Disneyland that didn’t exist. I win.”  
  
Turtle bumps Vince’s fist. “Nice,” Drama says.  
  
Vince smirks. “What, you think it was a sex thing?”  
  
Turtle shrugs. “Gotta ask,” he says. These days, he feels like that’s true. Vince and E have always had their own stuff going on — the business side of things that Turtle never gets too worked up over, because everything always works out — but now, when he sees them talking quietly at the edge of a crowd, he wonders what’s going on. He wonders which separate life they’re talking about.  
  
The next round is on Vince, and then Drama buys because he wants to toast his own success — he helped a woman win $46,000 on Squares that day — and then it’s Turtle’s turn, and then they go ‘round again. They talk like the old times: stories from home, the recent gossip from around town, girls they all know and have seen recently. When the volcano starts to look real, E suggests they head home, and Turtle agrees. “Good night,” he says, tapping E’s arm as they wait for the car.  
  
“Yeah, it was,” he says. “That place is kinda weird, huh?”  
  
“Little bit,” Turtle agrees. “Hey, you wanna go to Max’s, get a bite?”  
  
“Yeah, I could eat,” E says, but Vince shakes his head.  
  
“Let’s go home,” he says. “We’ll get pizza. Johnny, where can we get pizza right now?”  
  
“I know just the place,” he says, and starts dialing.  
  
Ten minutes after they get home, two huge pies are delivered. Drama brings them outside, where Turtle’s settled in on the deck. E and Vince bring out cold beers for everyone and hand them off, then Vince sits up on the railing, and E leans beside him. Drama takes the chair next to Turtle. It’s a beautiful night, just a small breeze, the air warm, the sky clear. A good time had by all. No girls, no girlfriends, nothing in the way. Turtle lights up. He passes the joint to Drama while he gets a piece of pizza, and when he looks up E’s passing it to Vince. His hand snags around Vince’s wrist for a moment while he takes a drag.  
  
“So what are you guys?” Turtle asks, sitting back in his lounge chair.  
  
“What?” E asks, exhaling a burst of smoke.  
  
Turtle waves his hand between them. “Your deal. Like, are you, what, boyfriends?”  
  
“I believe the politically correct term is partners,” Drama says, holding the joint. He sparks the end and takes a long drag.  
  
Vince is just exhaling his, and he coughs at the end of it and grabs E’s shoulder. E is still looking at Turtle. “Partners?” Turtle asks.  
  
Drama exhales. “Lovers?”  
  
“Jesus,” E says. Turtle blows a couple smoke rings his way. “Why you asking, Turtle?”  
  
“Just curious,” he says. “Like if you were going to tell someone, what would you say? This is Vince, my -” he can’t make himself say lover. “My partner?”  
  
“That sounds like we’re in business together,” Vince says.  
  
“We are,” E answers shortly.  
  
“Come on,” Turtle says. “Vince, how would you introduce E?”  
  
“It would depend on who I was talking to,” Vince says, shrugging.  
  
“Say Ari,” Turtle says.  
  
Vince rolls his eyes. “Ari, this is Eric, my manager and your worst nightmare.”  
  
“No, I mean, like -”  
  
“I know what you mean,” Vince says. “But I haven’t thought about it, really. I’ve never had to introduce him.”  
  
“Nobody knows but you guys,” E says. When he shrugs, his shoulder brushes Vince’s arm, and Vince shifts in closer to him. “And I can’t imagine saying ‘Hey, douche-bag, meet my boyfriend.’”  
  
Turtle winces. “Fuck, that sounds wrong,” he says. “E’s boyfriend. Nope, doesn’t work.”  
  
Drama’s chewing thoughtfully on his piece of pepperoni. “The question is, what would it be in your usual relationship? If you’d been with a girl this long -”  
  
“If E’d been with a girl for fifteen years, he’d be calling her Mrs. Murphy,” Turtle says. Drama and Vince laugh, and even E shakes his head.  
  
“Yeah, where’s my ring?” Vince asks, elbowing E in the ribs. “Get me something nice.”  
  
“I’ll put it on your credit card,” E says.  
  
“Wait, which one of you is the girl?” Turtle asks, sitting up.  
  
This time, both Vince and E speak together. “What?”  
  
Turtle shakes his head. “One of you’s the girl, right? That’s how it works with gay guys, I saw it on TV.”  
  
“You watch gay TV?” Drama asks.  
  
“So do you, dickhead, unless your L Word box set doesn’t count.”  
  
“I’m not a girl,” Vince says.  
  
“I can vouch for that,” E says. He crosses his arms and waves off the joint when Vince offers it. “No one’s the girl, Christ, Turtle. Have some class.”  
  
Turtle shrugs. “I’m just sayin’ what I’ve seen, man. That’s the way it works.” He takes a bite of pizza. It’s good, gooey and greasy with not too much oregano in the sauce. “You guys are gonna be gay, you ought to know this stuff.”  
  
Vince flings his arm back and the joint goes flying. Turtle sits up to protest. “No one’s gay,” Vince says. “What is your deal?”  
  
“Uh, yeah, you’re fucking a guy,” Turtle says.   
  
“Unless there’s something we don’t know about E,” Drama says, and they both look over at him.  
  
“Fuck you,” E says.  
  
“I mean, you have sex, right? I’m not just imagining that?”  
  
“You’re imagining us having sex?” E says. “This gets weirder all the time.”  
  
“I think Turtle’s asking a valid question,” Drama says.   
  
“I need another beer,” Vince says. He hops off the rail and walks inside. Turtle leans in, looks up at E.  
  
“C’mon,” he says. “What’s the story? Vince is just gay for you?”  
  
E shrugs. “Not just me,” he says. “I didn’t turn him, if that’s what you’re asking.”  
  
“There were other guys?” Drama asks. “Jesus, my baby brother, a fag.”  
  
“Don’t fucking say that,” E hisses. “Fuck, Drama. He’s not — neither one of us — it’s not like that, OK?”  
  
Turtle shakes his head, trying to clear it, trying to get a hold on things. “But, so, what, you have sex, right? I mean, like gay sex.”  
  
E rubs his face. “Now I’m gonna need another beer.”  
  
“What, like you haven’t told us every detail of your sex life with every girl since Sarah Coleman jacked you off in sixth grade?”  
  
“She was hot,” Drama says, and Turtle rolls his eyes.  
  
“She was 10 and you were like 47,” he says. “E. I’m just trying to get my head around this. You guys chased girls our whole life, and now you like cock?”  
  
E looks like he wants to crawl over the railing, but Turtle knows him, knows he won’t just cut and run. This is E; he’d throw a punch before he’d storm out.  
  
“ _I_  like cock.”  
  
Turtle’s head whips around, which is an unfortunate move that unleashes some kind of blurry earthquake on the deck. When he can focus again, he sees Vince standing in the doorway, holding a glass of water, looking at E. “That’s what you’re asking, right?” Vince says. He walks over and sits on the end of Drama’s lounge chair, folds his legs up Indian-style. “I like it. In general, I like sex, and I like having sex with guys. Gay sex, Turtle, any way you’re thinking about that. I don’t know what that makes me. I haven’t done it a lot — not nearly as much as with women — but yeah. Yeah.”  
  
Turtle waits, expecting someone to fill the silence, waiting for Vince to laugh and say gotcha. He waits, and waits, and then he clears his throat. “Since when?” Turtle asks.  
  
Vince shrugs. “Middle school, high school,” he says. “I traded blow jobs with Finn McBeal while we were at that summer acting camp.”  
  
“Jesus, I hate that story,” E says.  
  
Vince laughs. “And don’t worry, Turtle, I have specific tastes. You aren’t on the list.”  
  
Turtle rolls his eyes, but it makes him feel better, somehow. He wants to believe that Vince hasn’t been looking. He turns to E. “What about you, then, E? Secret summer camp rendezvous?” E shrugs. “C’mon, Vince likes cock and you don’t?”  
  
“I like Vince’s cock,” he says. “I haven’t tried any others.”  
  
“That’s my boy,” Drama says, patting Vince on the shoulder. “That’s like cross-genre appeal.”  
  
Vince snickers, and then so does E, and Turtle isn’t exactly sure what’s funny but he laughs, too, and leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. He feels his chair move a little and cracks an eye to see E sitting on the end, drinking from Vince’s water glass.  
  
“Man, guys’ night is just fucked forever,” he says, but no one seems to hear him.


	4. APRIL: Hollywood Stuff

In April, Turtle’s downtown picking up the latest Madden when he sees Cathy, the girl from Trivial Pursuit night. She looks him over and shakes her head. “You never called,” she says.  
  
Turtle nods. “I — some stuff happened,” he says. “Believe me when I say it had nothing to do with you.”  
  
“I believe you,” she says, smirking. “Still, it’s too bad.”  
  
“Isn’t it,” Turtle says.  
  
They have drinks that night and go back to her place. For a girl who only gave him her number last time, she’s very eager: they go right to the bedroom. Turtle can’t believe his luck, and mentions it afterwards, when he’s lying next to her, sharing a skinny joint.  
  
“Well, your friend was a little much,” she says. She giggles. “But if you want to double, my friend Alice is pretty hard up at the moment.”  
  
Turtle laughs. “Let’s keep it you and me, for now.”  
  
Two nights later he puts on his good hat — limited edition red Yanks cap, from the World Series — and takes her to a diner in Pasadena that serves sausage like those back home. He has a good time, a good meal, a good smoke,  _and_  he gets laid. The fucking perfect night.  
  
“She is real, right?” E says when Turtle rolls in the next morning. “There’s no air valve in the back?”  
  
“Yeah, I got a real girl, E,” Turtle says. “Remember what they’re like? With the tits and pussy?”  
  
Drama snorts. Vince looks genuinely proud of him. “Hey, come on, guys,” he says. “Turtle’s got a girl, we should be happy.”  
  
“So when do we get to meet her?” Drama asks. “And what about her friend?”  
  
“I dunno, how about tomorrow night?” Turtle says. “We could hit LAX.”  
  
“Aw, I hate that place,” E bitches. “Fucking meat market.”  
  
“But not a bad DJ,” Drama says, and Turtle has to agree.   
  
Vince turns to E, and they seem to have some kind of strange silent conversation. Then E shrugs and says, “Fine, whatever,” and Vince grins.   
  
“So let’s go,” Vince says. “Turtle, give her a call?”  
  
So the next night they meet up at LAX. Cathy brings a couple of friends, and they’re all wearing the college girl clubbing uniform: insanely tiny black skirts, shiny halter tops that barely hold their tits in place, makeup like they’re going on stage. Even Cathy, who had on jeans and green Converse sneakers the last time he saw her, is all dressed up. He’s not sure whether to cheer or start worrying; when he watches her grin expand nearly to breaking as he introduces Vince, he gets a pretty good idea.  
  
But this, at least, he’s used to. It’s been hard to hold a girl’s attention with Vince in the room since they were 13. Turtle doesn’t take it personally, and somehow knowing that Vince isn’t interested really helps. Cathy sits next to him at the table, not Vince, and after a while she seems to get a little bored with just staring at him while he talks to E, and then Turtle gets his date back. That serves him just fine. But Cathy’s friends don’t take the hint so easily. When Turtle gets up to dance with Cathy, he sees Vince on the dance floor with Heather. They cut out after a while to get refills, and Cathy says, “I think my friend likes your friend.”  
  
He follows her eyes to where Vince is talking to Heather at the table. Heather’s hands are on Vince’s arm, and Turtle can guess exactly how good his view of her tits is. Next to Vince, E’s staring at the dance floor. His arms are crossed, his eyes half-closed. To most people, he’d probably just look bored, but Turtle picks up on the annoyance — probably anger — from the bar. He shakes his head. “Trust me,” he says, “she’s got no chance.”  
  
Cathy looks instantly offended. “Hey,” Turtle says, trying to soothe her, “I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong with her, I mean, she’s totally hot. It’s just Vin —” and he stops, because he realizes, suddenly, that the truth isn’t an option. Vince and E’s secret is now his secret, too. “He’s seeing someone,” Turtle says, not looking at E.  
  
Cathy’s eyebrows go up. “Oo, really? Is he back with Mandy Moore?”  
  
“Uh,” Turtle says. If only it were that simple, he thinks. “You know, I really, I shouldn’t say any more. Hollywood stuff, you know.” Cathy smiles and nods, like she does know. Like Turtle’s actually talking about something.  
  
Cathy’s friends decide to cut out around midnight, and Turtle lets her go. He can’t exactly invite her back to Vince’s place, after all. Once they leave, he takes a seat next to E, who looks truly bored, now. Vince is dancing again, and Turtle watches E not watching him and shakes his head.  
  
“Man, I’m ready when you are,” he says, and E sits up.  
  
“Thank fucking god,” he says. “Get Vince, will you? I’ll get the car.”  
  
On the ride home the guys agree that Cathy’s hot and that her friends are kind of dull, which is nice cover for Drama, who struck out with all of them. “That Heather girl, though, she sort of had her eye on you, huh?” Turtle says to Vince.  
  
Vince laughs and stretches his arms across the back of the seat, his knuckles brushing Drama’s shoulder. “More than just her eyes,” he says. “Those things were real, by the way.”  
  
E, in the driver’s seat, shakes his head. “Keep talking, Romeo,” he says.  
  
Vince laughs and sits forward, his hands sliding around the seat and landing on E’s chest. “Don’t worry, baby, the only tits I want are yours.”  
  
“I’ll crash the fucking car, Vince, I swear,” E says.  
  
“Please do,” Drama says. “If I hit my head hard enough, maybe that image will get driven out.”  
  
The next morning, Turtle wakes up to E pounding on his door. “Get your ass out here right the fuck now,” he shouts.  
  
“All right, all right,” he says. The clock reads 9 a.m., way too fucking early for E to be mad at him. He tries to remember what he might have done yesterday to incur the wrath — did he forget to put Arnie’s toys back in the box? Suddenly he can’t remember if he let Arnie out after they came home. “Shit,” he says, thinking that probably literally sums up the problem. He pulls on a shirt, brushes his teeth, and stumbles down to the kitchen.  
  
E’s pacing in front of the island, holding his cell phone. To say he looks pissed would be like saying Ari looks busy. That’s not what makes Turtle’s stomach drop, though. Vince is sitting at the table, following E with his eyes. When he looks up at Turtle, he frowns. “The fuck did you tell her?” E asks.  
  
“Tell who what?” Turtle asks. He walks in, carefully, and puts both hands on the island countertop. “What’s going on?”  
  
“Your girlfriend talked to TMZ,” he says. “They’re saying Vince and Mandy are back together, that they’re having some kind of secret romance.”  
  
“What?” Turtle looks from E’s furious face to Vince’s serious expression. “Jesus,” he says. “Look — Cathy was talking about how Heather wanted to hook up with Vince, and I said she didn’t have a chance, that he was involved with somebody. And then she asked if it was Mandy, and I —” Oh, he thinks, realizing his mistake. He shrugs. “I didn’t say no, exactly, I guess.” He turns to Vince. “I was just trying to get her off your back!”  
  
Vince rolls his eyes. “I can handle myself,” he says.   
  
“Unlike you,” E says. “You haven’t learned anything? About keeping your fucking mouth shut around groupies?”  
  
“Hey, that’s bullshit,” Turtle says. “Look, I messed up a little, but I didn’t do anything that bad. She brought that Mandy shit up on her own. And what’s the fucking big deal, anyway?”  
  
“The big deal is it isn’t true,” E mutters.  
  
“So? Neither is half the stuff they put up,” Turtle says. He gives up on E. “Look, Vince, I’m sorry, man,” he says. “I didn’t mean to lead her to some weird conclusion. I just didn’t want her getting the wrong — well, the right idea.”  
  
Vince nods, after a minute, a slow apologetic nod. “It’s fine,” he says, and E huffs. “E, come on, he didn’t mean anything.” E shrugs. “OK?”  
  
“Fine,” he says, and Vince nods again.  
  
Vince stands up, claps E on the shoulder, then Turtle. “Now, if this crisis is over for the moment, I’m going back to bed.”  
  
“Get a shower, instead,” E says. “We’ve got Ari at 11.”  
  
“Fuck.” Vince sighs, then walks out of the kitchen.  
  
Turtle releases the death grip he’s got on the counter. E’s staring at his cell phone, clicking through messages or something. “Are we cool?” Turtle asks.  
  
E shrugs. “Whatever,” he says, not looking up.  
  
“Hey,” Turtle says. “Jesus, E. I don’t even — is this even about Vince’s career? Or are you mad that someone’s saying your boy’s getting it on with someone else?”  
  
E laughs, that tiny empty humorless laugh that means Turtle’s really in trouble. “You’re right, it’s just me overreacting,” he says. “You fucking prick. You told that girl he’s having a secret relationship, and now people are going to be looking.” He crosses his arms. “Turtle, I work every day to keep this quiet. Do you get that? Nobody gets to know.”  
  
“I get it,” Turtle says. “Which is why I said Mandy and not you, dickhead.”  
  
E shakes his head. “You don’t get it at all. This isn’t a fucking game.”  
  
Turtle rolls his eyes. “Whatever, man,” he says. He goes back to his own room to shower.  
  
He drives them in to Ari’s after breakfast. E still isn’t really speaking to him, but Vince is fine. Turtle figures that’s all that really matters. Fucking E, always overreacting to everything. So there’s one Web site that thinks Vince is still with Mandy. Who cares? It’s probably actually good cover, for Vince and E. The farther away from the kitchen talk they get, the more pleased Turtle is with his quick cover — though not so pleased that he’ll answer Cathy’s call, when it comes in on the way to Ari’s. Girls who talk to the press don’t get to hang around.  
  
“E, get the fuck in here, you little cocksucker!” Ari greets them, his face red, angry, and Turtle flinches. He takes a seat in the reception area while Vince and E go into Ari’s office and close the door. Shauna’s already in there. Through the glass, Turtle watches Ari and Shauna lecturing E — and maybe even Vince — the whole time, and he starts to wonder exactly what might be going on in there. Does Ari really know? If he’s calling E a cocksucker — Fuck, Turtle thinks, because no way will Vince forgive him for this. Not that he’ll have the chance, because E will fucking murder him.  
  
He doesn’t even wait until they’re in the car, just mutters to E as they approach the elevator, “Does Ari know?”  
  
E glances over. “You kidding? You would’ve seen the mushroom cloud,” he says, and Turtle feels relieved.  
  
It turns out the lecture from Ari was Mandy-related, though, and things are tense at lunch. Drama joins them, and Turtle’s pretty fucking glad. Vince and E sit on opposite sides of the table and barely talk. That’s unusual; though they’re careful not to touch in public, they usually don’t shut up, particularly after meetings. But the silence is long and certain, and Turtle tries once to ask what’s going on and gets only a glare from E. After that, he leads Drama into a long talk about his career prospects that gets comment, at least, from Vince.  
  
Things are quiet again on the way back, and Turtle ducks immediately into the den once they’re home in order to avoid having to talk to E. He puts in Madden and plays for a few hours, then ventures out for dinner. He grabs some cold pizza from the fridge, then goes to the living room, seeing E and Vince talking on the deck. Neither of them looks particularly happy, and though Turtle feels like maybe he should run away, he decides he’ll have to face the music sometime. He settles in with the remote and waits. Vince comes back in after a few moments, looking sort of pissed off, and sits on the couch near Turtle.  
  
“Uh, what’s up?” Turtle asks, noticing E’s still outside.  
  
“Nothing much,” Vince says. “Just E’s being a dick.”  
  
“Huh,” Turtle says. He wants to make a joke, but he can’t figure out what to say. He’s not sure how their relationship works, whether it would be funny or offensive to suggest that Vince just cut E off. So instead he stays quiet while Vince fidgets, crossing and uncrossing his arms, staring at the TV but really looking over at the deck every few minutes. Turtle misses, suddenly and completely, the days when all of Vince’s flings were casual, when the only thing Vince brooded over was business, when Turtle was never expected to really say more than, “Well, fuck that, man.”  
  
Finally E walks back in, phone in hand. He looks angry and mean, and Turtle suddenly gets a cold feeling in his stomach like when he’d hear his parents fight as a kid. “Are we going to talk about this?” E asks, holding open the door.  
  
“Talk here,” Vince says. E rolls his eyes. “You just don’t want an audience because you don’t want anyone else to see what a jackass you’re being.”  
  
“I’m a jackass, right,” E says. He crosses his arms.  
  
“What’s going on?” Turtle asks.  
  
E keeps his arms crossed tight. “After your little line at the club, Shauna says it’s important that Vince is seen without Mandy. So he’s going to the  _Zydeco_  premiere later this week.”  
  
“Yeah? I heard that movie’s smokin’, man,” Turtle says. “With Alyssa Milano and that new girl, the model?”  
  
“Kinsy Carver,” E says. “Who also happens to be Vince’s date.”  
  
Turtle glances at Vince, who is leaning back as far as he can into the couch. “You’re banging Kinsy Carver?”  
  
E snorts and Vince says, “No. No. We’re just going to the premiere. It’s not a date, it’s a fucking publicity stunt.”  
  
“Because that’s how it always works,” E says, and Vince looks at Turtle.  
  
“You get this, don’t you?”  
  
Turtle looks from E to Vince. “Actually, man, I kinda gotta side with E on this one,” he says, and Vince’s eyes go wide. “Sorry, but you earned that reputation.”  
  
“Exactly,” E says. “Exactly. When was the last time you went out with a girl and didn’t end up fucking her at the end of the night?”  
  
Vince sighs. “E, you have to trust me,” he says. “I’m not going to fuck her. I’m not going to fuck anyone, OK, anyone but you.” Turtle winces, but he’s pretty sure neither of them sees it. “Shauna says I should do this, and you know she’s right,” Vince says. He stands up and walks over and puts his hands on E’s biceps. Turtle looks at the TV, but he can still see them out of the corner of his eye, can’t miss it when Vince pulls E closer or when E nods, then laughs a little at something Vince is saying. Turtle ducks his head and angles his hat when he sees Vince’s head start to bend down, and he almost can’t even hear them kiss over the noise from the television.  
  
They go to the premiere as a group and pick up Kinsy Carver on the way, from her hotel. She slides in next to Vince and cuddles up to him, which is nice because it gives Turtle a great view of her tits. He looks up to give E a wink and notices the careful blankness of his face, looks down to see Kinsy’s hand resting high on Vince’s thigh. The cold feeling returns, and he spends the rest of the ride looking out the window while Drama hits on Kinsy.  
  
He gets it, then, that some of this stuff is new territory for Vince and E, too. If they’ve only been serious for the past few months, well, it’s not so hard to understand why E’s so tense. Turtle feels bad, for E and for his own role in it all, but he realizes that this is something that had to come up at some point. Maybe it’s better to figure things out now, to figure out whether things can keep up like this forever.  
  
Vince doesn’t fuck her, as far as Turtle can tell, but things are still tense around the house for the next few days. Turtle stays out late on Tuesday with Drama, then eases back into house, hoping Vince and E are already curled up in their beds, or Vince’s bed, or whatever. Instead he sees the blue flicker of the television on in the living room, and he goes in to see which roommate is up late.  
  
Neither, it turns out. They’re crashed out on the couch, E asleep on his back, Vince spread out over him, his head on E’s chest, his arms around him, E’s hand tangled in Vince’s hair, his other hand on Vince’s bare ribcage. Turtle backs out of the room fast and hurries up the stairs. He’s glad they’re getting along again, he tells himself.


	5. MAY: Distraction Fucking

Vince starts filming a vampire movie, another James Cameron thing, a few weeks later. Half of the crew is from the  _Aquaman_  set, and they all seem to know Vince and E. Turtle goes on set with them and Drama a few times, and he’s ridiculously nervous; he worries that everything he sees between Vince and E is apparent to everyone. They have it down to a science, though; they’re casual and cool, never too touchy, never too feely. When E draws Vince to the side, it’s to talk business, and no one seems to notice or care. Turtle starts to relax. After all, E’s a pro, and so is Vince. Fifteen years, Turtle reminds himself.  
  
On the sixth day of filming, a wire breaks on set and Vince falls. Fifteen, twenty feet. Turtle is standing at the back of the soundstage when it happens; he and Drama stopped by to watch some of the flight sequence, because Vince has been talking about it nonstop.  
  
Vince hitting the hollow wood soundstage is the worst sound Turtle’s ever heard. There’s dead silence for a second, and then Turtle hears E yell, and everything re-engages, everyone starts moving. He and Drama push to the front of the crowd and find E already kneeling beside Vince. Vince is curled onto his side, his head tucked in to his chest, one of his arms thrown out at a really sick angle. Turtle shoves a PA out of the way and up close, he can hear Vince moaning.  
  
“Jesus Christ,” he says.  
  
“Vince? Vince, hey, come on, talk to me,” E is saying. His hand is hovering over Vince’s shoulder. Turtle looks at him and then at the stunned crowd and realizes that no one is in charge; no one is doing anything. Usually, that’s E’s job. Turtle’s chest gets tight, and his fear spirals in two directions, for Vince and for what might happen, what someone might see here.  
  
“Somebody call an ambulance!” Turtle yells. He grabs the same PA by both shoulders. “Get the medics. Run. Bring them here with everything they’ve got.” The girl turns to run, and Turtle sees Cameron at the edge of the crowd. “Clear this fucking stage, man,” he says, and the director’s eyes focus, narrow, and then he nods.  
  
Five minutes later, there’s no one left but the four of them, Cameron, and the medics. Vince is crying, now, and Turtle isn’t sure but he thinks maybe Drama is, too. He and E have their arms around Vince, holding him still while the medic evaluates his crooked arm.   
  
“E,” Vince sobs. “God, E, I can’t –“  
  
“Hey, you’re doing fine,” E says, his hands steady on Vince’s shoulders. When Vince reaches up, Drama grabs his hand before he can clamp on to E. Turtle feels both better and worse, seeing that. “Just hang on.”  
  
“Yeah, bro, it’s gonna be fine,” Drama says.  
  
The medic fits him with a neck brace, then they load him onto a stretcher and into an ambulance. Turtle pushes Drama into the back and turns to E. His eyes are wide and flickering from side to side.  
  
“I should go -” E says, and Turtle shakes his head and grabs E by the arm.  
  
“No, man, you should fucking  _get it together_ ,” Turtle hisses. “You wanna make today ten times worse?”  
  
E flinches and yanks loose from Turtle, and for a second Turtle thinks he’s gonna hit him. He’s ready. He’ll fucking fight E if he has to. “Someone’s got to be in charge,” Turtle says, “and it had better fucking be you.”  
  
E rubs his face, then nods, just twice. It’s almost like Turtle can see him snapping back into place. “Let’s get the car, come on,” he says, and Turtle agrees.  
  
He chases the ambulance as best he can. “He’ll be fine,” Turtle says.  
  
“Yeah,” E says, almost off-handed. He glances around. “Fuck, I think I left my phone back there.”  
  
At the hospital, Drama meets them and says Vince has been taken in to get looked over, that they can’t go back but there’s a room for them to wait in. Turtle turns on the television and tries to focus on that, but he feels, again, like someone’s sitting on his chest. Drama keeps cursing and calls his mother three times. E is calm. He borrows Turtle’s phone and calls Ari and Shauna and Cameron and a few other people that Turtle doesn’t recognize, tells them all not to come over because they don’t want a bigger scene. “I’ve got things under control,” E says, and Turtle believes him.  
  
After an hour, a doctor comes in and tells them Vince is going to be fine: beat up, bruised, mildly concussed, a broken arm and a cracked clavicle that will require a complicated cast, and a fractured ankle, but fine. “He’ll heal well,” the man says, and Turtle hears Drama gulping air next to him.  
  
“Thank you,” E says, standing up and shaking the guy’s hand. “Look, we really appreciate it. Can we see him?”  
  
“I’d like to keep it limited to family,” the doctor says, and Drama stands up.  
  
“We’re all family,” he says.  
  
The doctor is persuaded, and he gives them a room number and warns them that Vince might be pretty out of it. E rides the elevator up with them, then stops in the lobby. “I’ll catch up, I’m gonna make some calls,” he says.  
  
“That’s one cold motherfucker,” Drama says, but Turtle gives him a shove down the hall.  
  
“Leave him alone,” he says.  
  
Vince looks bad. His arm is in a sling and his ankle is wrapped, and he’s propped up by a few pillows, his head hanging slackly to one side. He grimaces when they walk in. “Guys, hey,” he says, his voice thick. “Where’s E?”  
  
“Making some calls,” Drama says. “How are you, man?”  
  
“I hurt,” Vince says. “But they gave me some stuff for it.”  
  
“Yeah, anything good?” Turtle asks.  
  
“Not good enough,” Vince says. He blinks as though he might like to fall asleep.   
  
“You all right?” Turtle asks. Hospitals make him nervous; he’s never been good with sick people. The only thing he knows to do is offer ways to relax, and right now a joint doesn’t seem appropriate. Drama’s no better. He’s anxious enough for both of them, bustling around Vince’s room, pulling the curtains closed and telling him everything their mother said on the phone. Turtle keeps glancing at the door. E is great at this stuff. He’s always been the adult, the one who handled the paperwork when they got speeding tickets as kids and filled out the graduation forms in high school. Turtle glances at his watch; it’s been fifteen minutes.  
  
“Maybe I should -” he starts, but E finally pushes in even as he talks.   
  
His voice is falsely bright and cheerful. “Hey, man, how you feeling?”  
  
Turtle closes the door. “E,” Vince says. He holds out his good hand, and E walks over, takes it across the bed like he’s going to shake it.  
  
“Everything’s taken care of with the movie,” E says. “And Ari talked to the production manager, insurance is going to take care of all of this, so don’t worry, man.”  
  
“Eric,” Vince says, his voice like a sigh, but E doesn’t move any closer. Turtle thinks about shoving him. “Guys, give us a minute?” Vince asks.  
  
“Take all the time you need,” Turtle says, ushering Drama into the hall. He looks back and sees E’s hand on Vince’s face, just resting there, and E shaking his head.   
  
When E comes back out, he looks calm, but not cold, and has his hands shoved in his pockets. “He’s sleeping,” he says, with a shrug. “I told him we’d find some pudding.”  
  
They get to take Vince home the next day, after they’ve finished putting on his crazy complicated cast. His arm sticks out from the side of his body like a white plaster wing, and there’s a weird bracing pole between that and his chest. Drama decides to move back in for the six weeks that the cast will be on, “to tend personally to your needs, bro.”  
  
And he does, mostly. Vince stays home because getting in and out of the car is painful and a hassle with the wheelchair, and eating out is nearly impossible with his arm. E still runs around town during the day, taking meetings, trying to figure out a way for the movie to go without Vince for a while. From what Turtle understands, the film was insured against Vince’s injury, but no one’s happy about having to shut down for two months. Turtle, for his part, runs the errands that Vince sends him on and spends a lot of time trying to figure out how a guy with one usable arm can play Wii, without much success.  
  
At the end of Vince’s first week home,  _The Hollywood Reporter_  runs an article saying Cameron’s considering having Topher Grace step in. Turtle keeps the story away from Vince until E comes in that afternoon with the paper in hand.  
  
“If they want another vampire, they can fucking have him,” Vince says, throwing his beer bottle against the wall. “Jesus fuck, E, what are you even doing if this shit’s being talked about?”  
  
“Vince, they can’t do that. Nobody wants to do that,” E says, spreading his hands. “That story, it’s just somebody running their mouth off about what they would do if you couldn’t finish the role.”  
  
“That’s not what it sounds like,” he says. “You’re taking three meetings a day because things are fine?”  
  
“I’m just trying to help out,” E says. “I’m trying to protect the movie.”  
  
“Fucking do your job and protect me, then,” Vince says, and he throws Turtle’s beer bottle, still half-full, against the wall next to E’s head.  
  
This time, E clears the room. Turtle and Drama go to the kitchen and listen to the rise and fall of Vince’s and E’s voices from the living room.  
  
“E’s right,” Drama says. “They can’t replace him now.”  
  
“I don’t think that’s what they’re really fighting about,” Turtle says. He hears another bottle break in the living room, and then E walks into the kitchen. Beer drips from his hair.   
  
“Johnny!” Vince yells from the living room, and Drama ducks out, muttering, “Wish I had my helmet.”  
  
E starts to dry himself off at the sink with short, angry motions. Turtle shakes his head. “You gotta stop this shit, E,” he says, and E turns around.  
  
“You, too? You think I’m off fucking the AD?”  
  
Turtle blinks. “No. I think you’re doing exactly what you say you’re doing, and I think you should knock it the hell off before he moves up to throwing shit at the television.”  
  
“What –“  
  
“He’s bored,” Turtle says. “He’s bored and he’s in pain, and you’re out of the house ten hours a day. He doesn’t need you to be his manager right now, man, he needs you to be his, you know, his guy.”  
  
E wrings out the towel and leans back against the sink. “What the hell are you talking about, Turtle?”  
  
“Look, man, I’m just saying, there’s only so much Drama and I can do.” E narrows his eyes, and Turtle pushes on. “He hasn’t left the house in five days, E. Yesterday I played four hours of blackjack with him, and Drama’s had him reading lines from the first season of ‘Viking Quest.’” E starts to talk, and Turtle stops him, slamming his hands on the counter. “This is Vince. He’s used to partying, to seeing people, to having a good time. You should be here, giving him, I don’t know, distraction blow jobs or something.”  
  
E gives him a flat, what-the-fuck stare, but doesn’t say anything. He shakes his head and walks out of the kitchen, but the next morning he comes to breakfast wearing boxers and one of Vince’s T-shirts. He takes two bagels out of the toaster and gets a plateful of eggs from Drama, then shrugs at Turtle.   
  
“You’re right,” he says. “Distraction fucking it is.”  
  
Turtle groans, and E laughs and heads back to Vince’s room. They stay in there almost all day, and when they do emerge, Vince is in a much better mood.  
  
“I should buy you a car,” he says to Turtle the next night, when the two of them are sitting by the pool. E is inside, getting more drinks. “Seriously, man.”  
  
“I think that would make me E’s pimp,” Turtle says. “But don't let that stop you. Maybe a Jag?”  
  
E carries out two gin and tonics and hands Turtle one. “No more for you, babe, you’re medicated,” he says to Vince, sitting on the arm of his lounge chair.  
  
Vince pouts – actually fucking pouts, lip out and everything – and then presses his head against E’s chest and rests his good hand on E’s thigh. Turtle keeps his eyes trained on E’s, talking about the new gardener that’s supposed to be starting at the end of the week and the possibility of a Home and Garden photo-shoot at summer’s end. “They said they can do topiaries, like, a bat like in the movie and stuff,” Turtle says.  
  
“That sounds good,” E says. His breath hitches, and Turtle realizes Vince has his hand inside E’s open fly.  
  
“Uh, guys, should I leave?” Turtle asks.  
  
“Unless you wanna watch me suck E off, yeah,” Vince says.  
  
And, wow, does he ever not want to see that. He goes back to the house and up to his room, and when he looks out at the pool, E has turned so he has both feet on the seat of Vince’s chair and Vince is sitting up, sideways, between his legs, the horrible cast sticking out behind him, his head bent over E’s lap. Turtle can’t see Vince’s mouth, though he can imagine it, but he does see E’s pale fingers in Vince’s hair, and he closes the curtains fast and goes to bed without jerking off.  
  
The next day, Vince and E both apologize at breakfast. “Whatever, like I haven’t seen you guys get your game on a hundred times before,” Turtle says, keeping his eyes on his eggs.  
  
“Really?” Vince asks.  
  
“Not with each other, but it’s not so different,” Turtle says.  
  
Vince grins. “It is different,” he says. “E’s a fucking great lay.”  
  
E starts coughing up his orange juice. “That’s way more than I want to know,” Turtle says.  
  
“Yeah?” Drama takes his seat. “What about it, E, how’s Vince?”  
  
“What?” E sputters.  
  
“How is Vince in bed?” Turtle glares at Drama. “What?” Drama says. “I mean, we’ve assumed, all these years, but I’ve never heard a first-hand report,” he says. “I just wanna make sure he’s living up to the family name.”  
  
Vince is grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Yeah, E, how am I?”  
  
E rolls his eyes. “Jesus, what else am I going to say? You’re a fucking god, Vince,” he says, and Vince laughs and throws his good arm around E’s shoulders and kisses him, with tongue, right there at the table.  
  
“Aw, I don’t need to see that while I’m eating,” Turtle says, shading his eyes.  
  
“What, like anything’s gonna put you off your food?” E says, but his face is flushed.   
  
Turtle scarfs his eggs, not looking up at either of them, then says, “E, are you sticking around today?”  
  
“Yeah, I thought so,” E says, helping Vince up out of his chair. Vince sinks in close to him. He still can’t walk without someone holding him up, but E’s got him. E’s always got him.  
  
“I’m gonna go out for a bit, get some stuff done,” Turtle says.  
  
“Stuff sounds good,” Drama says. “I’ll go with.”  
  
They both find girls at a bar near the UCLA campus, ply them with drinks and Hollywood stories, and go back to their place to fuck. “You really know Vincent Chase?” the girl asks.  
  
“Sometimes better than I want to,” Turtle says.  
  
“What’s he like?”  
  
Turtle rolls his eyes. “He’s a fucking god,” he says. “But I’m kinda tired of hearing about it.”


	6. JUNE: On the Mend

Vince works some magic with the doctors and E works some magic with the movie, and Vince goes back on set five weeks after the big fall. He can barely walk, and he’s only allowed to have his arm out of the cast because he keeps it splinted and wrapped all the time. “Mostly I just sit around,” he says when Turtle asks how that works. “We’re shooting every scene where all I do is sit or stand or talk. Lots of close-ups.”  
  
“Yeah, so drink your water,” E says, pushing it toward Vince with his elbow. He’s working to strap up Vince’s sling, which he’s supposed to wear during the day whenever he can.   
  
“Would you lay off?” Vince says, rolling his eyes.   
  
“You guys are a barrel of laughs,” Turtle says, and then they both turn annoyed glares on him.  
  
Really, things haven’t been very funny recently. Vince has an excuse, Turtle figures, because he’s tired and in pain. Of course, he takes most of his mood out on E, which means E’s been a fucking joy to deal with, too. Plus, E isn’t a big fan of the no-cast plan to begin with; he’s mentioned several times that one trip, one stumble, and Vince will be back in the hospital and looking at surgery, and then the whole fucking thing will be shut down again. Turtle can’t tell whether E is more worried about the impact that would have on Vince or the film.  
  
Part of the deal with Vince’s doctor is that Vince has physical therapy every day. The physical therapist comes to their house four times a week, and Vince goes to her clinic on the other three. Turtle drives. The first time, he goes back with Vince to the weight room and watches Marissa do her thing, but it makes Turtle a little sick to the stomach. He doesn’t want to tell Vince that, though, because if he’s tough enough to endure having his arm twisted around, Turtle’s sure he should be tough enough to watch. So he starts bringing Arnold along and taking him over to a dog park, two blocks from the PT building. He stays out there for exactly forty-five minutes, until he can wander back in just in time to help Vince to the car.  
  
Thursday is usually an on-set day, so Turtle’s downtown, talking to Kid Kloster at the Nike store, when Vince calls.  
  
“I need to get to Marissa’s place,” he says.  
  
“What? Vin, I’m all the way downtown,” Turtle says. “Can’t E drive you?”  
  
“E can’t know,” Vince says. “I think I fucked up my ankle again. Please, Turtle, come get me.”  
  
So Turtle picks Vince up from the soundstage. He’s limping heavily and has a crutch under one arm. “What’d you do?”  
  
Vince sighs. “It was a bet,” he says. Turtle stares at him. “Wheelchair racing.”  
  
“Oh, Jesus, E’s gonna murder you,” Turtle says.  
  
“No fucking kidding,” Vince says. “Drive, OK? I got a Vicodin from a kid on the crew and I don’t want it wearing off before we get there.”  
  
At Marissa’s clinic, Turtle has to help Vince out of the car. He figures there’s no way this is all gonna be fixed easily, and he starts to wonder what kind of damage E will do to him for being an accomplice. When his phone rings, he jumps, until he sees it’s just Drama.  
  
“Remember that girl Heidi?” Drama says. “She’s gonna be at Noveau tonight with her three girlfriends. Three, Turtle. That’s two apiece.”  
  
“Aw, Jesus,” Turtle says. Heidi was a foreign exchange student they met the year before, when Drama signed up for German lessons and Turtle went along for the chance to meet hot college chicks. Apparently, “Viking Quest” was huge in Germany. And tonight will probably be a great night to be out of the house. “All right, man, I’m in.”  
  
Vince is in a terrible mood, and on crutches, when he gets back to the car. It’s almost enough to bring Turtle down about his date. “What’d she say?” he asks.  
  
“I can’t put any weight on it for at least a week,” Vince says. “No more walking cast. I have to go to the fucking hospital and get it recast.”  
  
Turtle swallows. “You want me to call E, have him meet us there?”  
  
Vince shakes his head. “I’ll surprise him,” he says darkly.  
  
  
The surprise does not go over well at all.  
  
  
Vince limps out to the living room, using two crutches, his knee bent to suspend his ankle. “Please tell me you’re going out,” he says. “No, tell me you’re going somewhere with alcohol.”  
  
“You want to ride along?” Drama asks.  
  
“Anywhere,” Vince says. Down the hall, Turtle hears a thump that’s probably E throwing his phone against the wall. “I’ll wait in the car.”  
  
They go to Noveau and Vince gets them and Heidi and her friends in VIP. Vince sits on a little couch with his foot propped up and drinks a lot of scotch, and Turtle makes pretty fair progress with a red-head named Lisa. Next to him, a blonde spends most of the evening vying for Vince’s attention, though his shot glass seems to be winning.  
  
Which is why it surprises Turtle to look over at one point and see the Vince kissing the blonde.  
  
“Hey,” Turtle says. “Vince, what are you doing?”  
  
Vince pulls back. “Huh,” he says. His eyes are unfocused. “That didn’t taste right.”  
  
Turtle takes a deep breath. He looks at Lisa’s tits. He looks back at Vince. “Sorry, baby,” he says, giving the tits one more glance, “but I gotta look out for my boy.”  
  
He pulls Vince up out of the booth and signals Drama for some help; they get him out to the limo, acting as his human crutches. Vince hums a funny little tune as they go outside. “E’s gonna fucking kill me,” he says when they get in the car. “Did I fuck her? I don’t think I did, but I thought about it.”  
  
“I’d leave that part out of your apology,” Drama says.  
  
“Vin, nothing happened,” Turtle says.  
  
“Hmm.” Vince puts his head down in his hands, so his words come out muffled. “So much easier if I wasn’t fucking Eric,” he says.  
  
Turtle shares a panicked look with Drama. “Uh, what’s that?”  
  
“Everything,” Vince says. He props his chin up. “My whole life would be so much easier.”  
  
“That may be true, but -” Drama starts, but Vince cuts him off.  
  
“Where is E?” he asks, looking around. He rests his head on Drama’s shoulder and closes his eyes. “I miss him.”  
  
Vince mumbles to himself the rest of the ride home. Turtle tries not to listen, and even Drama turns up the radio. When they pull into the drive, Turtle hops out and unlocks the front door. E’s sitting at the kitchen island, drinking a beer and reading a script. “You might want to give us a hand,” Turtle says.  
  
“With what?”  
  
“Vince,” he says. “He’s a fucking mess.”  
  
E sets the bottle down, slowly, then follows Turtle out to the driveway. Drama has Vince propped up against the front pillar, and the limo is on its way out of the front gate.  
  
“Hey, E,” Drama says. “We brought you a present.”  
  
“Drunk Vince,” E says. “Just what I always wanted.”  
  
“Always wanted,” Vince echoes, turning and putting his arms, suddenly, around E’s neck. It’s not a good fit at all, but E somehow manages to hold him up.  
  
“All right,” E says, his hands on Vince’s shoulders, “let’s get you to bed. Christ, you smell like a bar.”  
  
Drama helps E carry Vince off to his room, and Turtle stays outside to smoke. He’s on number 2 by the time Drama comes back out. “He OK?”  
  
“He’ll regret those last few shots tomorrow,” Drama says.  
  
“I bet that ain’t all he’ll regret,” Turtle says.  
  
The next day, though, Vince shows no sign of remembering anything. He barely remembers being at the club. In fact, it’s Turtle who’s in trouble, not Vince. “He’s on fucking pain meds,” E yells, “and you took him to a club? Jesus Christ, he could’ve OD’d, Turtle, he could’ve fucking died.”  
  
“But he didn’t,” Vince says, limping into the kitchen with his crutches. “Though if you keep yelling like that, I’ll wish I had.”  
  
He sits at the breakfast table, and E seems torn between going on with Turtle or saying something to Vince. Eventually, he just walks out, his phone already at his ear.   
  
“Good timing,” Turtle says.   
  
“He’s a little cranky this morning,” Vince says.  
  
“How are you?”  
  
“I started throwing up around three and didn’t stop until six,” Vince says. “Which is part of the reason E’s so bitchy.”  
  
Turtle shakes his head. “Listen, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize -”  
  
“Hey,” Vince says, “it’s all right. Last night, I wanted to be wasted, and I usually get what I want.”  
  
“Yeah,” Turtle says. He glances back, but he can hear the echo of E’s voice in the living room. “Uh, so, is everything OK with you and E?”  
  
Vince shrugs. “He’s pissed. He’ll get over it.”  
  
“I mean, about last night?”  
  
“Yeah, I guess,” Vince says. “It was kind of stupid. Wait, why? Did something happen?”  
  
Turtle thinks about the girl, and he thinks about whether Vince would really want to know. He shakes his head. “Can I ask you something, though?” he says. “Do you think things would, uh, sometimes do you think things would be easier if you guys weren’t, you know?”  
  
Because it’s Vince, not E, the first look on Vince’s face isn’t anger: it’s confusion, then something like contemplation. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean, sure, things would be easier in a lot of ways.”  
  
“So is it worth it?”  
  
Vince looks up, and Turtle can hear E yelling in the living room, “Fuck you, Ari, get him the damn time!” He grins. “Yeah,” he says. “It totally is.”


	7. JULY: Breeders

In July, Turtle gets a call from a woman he met at the dog park near the physical therapy center. “Congratulations,” she says, “it’s two boys and a girl.”  
  
“What?” Turtle feels a quick flash of panic, then realizes, hey, he didn’t fuck this girl. He didn’t even get close; she was really most interested in Arnie.  
  
“Puppies,” she says. “Morgana had three puppies last night. I thought you should know. And I need you to come over and sign some papers.”  
  
Drama’s on set all day at Hollywood Squares, but Turtle doesn’t want to go alone, particularly once the girl starts talking about AKC registration and all of that. He’s not sure Arnold is quite the sire he may have led her to believe when he still thought he had a shot. So he asks E to come along, and since Vince is tied up on set all morning, he agrees.  
  
“You don’t think she could, like, ask for doggie child support or something, do you?” Turtle asks.  
  
E shakes his head. “You better hope not,” he says, “‘cuz that shit’s coming out of your check.”  
  
They drive out to Malibu and over to the chick’s house. She shrieks when she sees Arnold and makes them tie him up in the yard. “He might eat them!” she says. “Besides, Morgana’s reeeeally protective.” E gives Turtle a look like this chick is psycho, and Turtle shrugs but is starting to agree. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt that says Rotties Are For Lovers, and she is covered in dog hair and smell. “Come on, don’t you want to see them?”  
  
It’s ridiculously hot inside her house, considering it’s 95 outside and was 65 in the car on the way over. “They can’t regulate their own temperatures,” she says, “so we have to keep them warm.”  
  
“I love this,” E whispers, and Turtle shoves him.  
  
The bitch — Morgana — is lying in a wooden box, the puppies all pressed against her, one of them nursing. They each have loops of colored ribbon tied around their tiny paws: green for one, blue for another, and white with flowers for the last. “So I can tell them apart,” the chick — Turtle finally remembers her name, Laura — says. “I read a book.”  
  
Laura flits around and tells them about how she’s already got buyers for the puppies. “Because of Morgana’s breeding I can get at least a thousand,” she says.  
  
“Wow, that’s great,” Turtle says.  
  
“Maybe you should ask her for dog support,” E says, smirking.  
  
Turtle shows her the papers they got from the kennel when they picked up Arnie. She doesn’t seem disappointed in what she reads, which makes Turtle start to wonder what they could be making with Arnold as a breeder. He mentions it to E when Laura goes back to make copies of the papers.  
  
“Don’t even,” E says. “You gonna read a book on breeding? And where you gonna keep them? In your room?”  
  
“Come on, they’re cute,” Turtle says. He sits by the box and holds his hand out. Morgana growls a little, then sniffs him and turns back to her pillow. She does the same when E crouches at the edge of the box. One of the puppies stumbles over toward them and butts up against E’s hand, and he shakes his head but eventually gives in and holds it. Laura comes back and gives him some specific instructions — keep the feet like this, keep the head tilted a certain way, don’t move where Morgana can’t see you — and E holds the little dog the whole time Turtle’s signing whatever Laura puts in front of him. She’s looking at E in a soft way that makes Turtle start to dream of the pussy he could get if they had pups around all the time. He shoots a look at E, then realizes E isn’t exactly in the market. Laura giggles at the same time that E groans, and Turtle looks over in time to see E holding the pup out at arm’s length. A wet stain is spreading on his shirt.  
  
Turtle can’t help it; he laughs, too. “Yeah, real fucking cute,” E says.  
  
He’s still bitching about it when they get home. “Look, I said I’d pay for the shirt,” Turtle says as they walk in the house.  
  
“What happened to you?” Vince asks, looking up from the dining table. He’s got script pages set out in front of him, and Drama’s sitting opposite, running lines.  
  
E glares at Turtle and says he’s going off to take a shower. “He got some puppy piss on his shirt,” Turtle says. “But man, you guys should’ve seen them, they were so fucking cute.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“They’d be like pussy magnets,” Turtle says. “I wanted to get you one, Drama, but E said no.” Turtle takes a seat at the table. “What do you think about breeding Arnold?” he asks Vince.  
  
Vince shrugs. “What would that mean?”  
  
“We’d have to get him a girlfriend,” Turtle says. “Maybe a couple of them. And I guess we’d have to build some kind of puppy box. Like, there are all these rules. But I think it’d be OK, I mean, I could keep an eye on ‘em.”  
  
“I dunno, sounds complicated,” Vince says. “I’m not sure I want to be responsible for that many little lives, you know? Plus I bet E would have a coronary.”  
  
“No shit.” Turtle sighs, then gets himself a beer. “Man, if he’s this prissy about a dog, what’s he gonna do when he’s got eight hundred Irish Catholic babies underfoot?”  
  
He looks up and sees Vince turn toward him and squint, a really? You just said that? look. “Uh, I mean, you know, like when you guys adopt?” Vince keeps squinting. “Or nieces and nephews?”  
  
“My kids will be perfectly trained,” Drama says, shuffling the script pages around. “I plan to have two girls and a boy, preferably in a girl-boy-girl pattern so that he’ll always be just old enough to look out for his sisters and scare the shit out of their boyfriends.”  
  
“You need a girl to have a baby,” Turtle says, and then feels like hitting himself when Vince adds a shake of the head to the squinty glare. “I mean, a girl who’d be with you.”  
  
“Thank you for that wisdom, Turtle. I’m not talking about now. I mean, in a few years. Once I’m done sowing my oats.”  
  
Turtle lets that one slide, just because he’s afraid to get his foot any further in his mouth.  
  
“You got the woman picked out?” Vince asks, turning back to the table.  
  
“I can think of several prime candidates,” Drama says.  
  
He makes a list, which starts with some girls from the neighborhood who must already be married, some possibly twice, and Turtle just listens. He thinks about the girls he knows who are married now. He’d always figured it would just happen for them, eventually they’d all just settle down — E first, then the rest of them — and have wives who’d sit around and bitch about them over cocktails while they burned shit on the grill in the backyard. It’s weird to think it won’t be like that, that when Turtle starts a family it’s still gonna be just Vince and E. He starts to wonder whether his future wife (he can see her, petite and not too stacked, blonde, a dirty mouth but sharp as a fucking tack) will get to know about things with them, what she’ll think about it. Whether the kids will get to go play at Uncle Vinnie’s place.  
  
E comes back out, showered and changed, and says, “How was it, today?”  
  
“Call’s at 3,” Vince says, and E glances at his watch.  
  
“Jesus.”  
  
Vince nods. “Don’t worry, they’re gonna send a car.”  
  
Vince runs lines for another hour, then eats a bowl of cereal and heads to bed at 6. This is about par for the course since he started back on the film — his time off fucked up the schedule so much that now Cameron’s pushing everyone twice as hard. Drama challenges Turtle to a round of video golf, and since E seems to be at loose ends, he joins in and, of course, kicks their asses. Drama, sore loser like always, leaves early, so Turtle and E go for another round with higher stakes. E takes an easy putt on the third green, and Turtle says, “I’m sorry about the shirt thing, today.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” E says. The ball goes in. “Not like you knew.”  
  
“Yeah.” He steps up, tries to line up right. “Are you and Vince gonna, uh, we were talking today about kids.”  
  
E sighs. “What, is he pregnant?”  
  
“Ha fucking ha,” Turtle says, and slices disastrously. “Seriously, what about that? Like, don’t you think you’ll, like, want that?”  
  
“I don’t know, Turtle,” E says. “I’ll jump off that bridge when I get to it, man. Maybe I’ll just steal a couple of yours. You’re gonna owe me your firstborn pretty soon, anyway.”  
  
“Yeah, bite me,” Turtle says, though he is losing spectacularly. “You guys really are just making this up as you go, huh?”  
  
“What, you think there’s a book I should get?” E asks. He drives three hundred yards and nearly has a hole-in-one. “‘Cuz man, I would read that. I’d buy the fucking rights.”  
  
Turtle pauses with the club in his hand. There’s something tired in E’s voice that worries him, a little, and Turtle thinks there’s something he’s supposed to say right here, something he’s supposed to ask. But there are boundaries, clear ones, and he’s not gonna push any further. He really mostly doesn’t want to know. So instead he says, “Fifth hole’s my lucky one, man, you wanna up the bet?”  
  
“Yeah,” E says, with a shrug. “I’ll take that action.”  
  
“All right.” They shake on it, and Turtle scores a birdie. “Guess I get to keep the kid after all,” he says, and E laughs.


	8. AUGUST: Try Harder

Drama gets obsessed with celebrity auctions over the summer, and it hits a peak when he makes Turtle drive him to Encino to buy a blackboard that he insists used to hang in Al Pacino’s kitchen. It says “Today’s Fuckin’ Special” at the top and is one of the cheesiest pieces of schlock that Turtle has ever seen. The other guys agree, though Vince tells them to take it easy on Drama; he’s still stung by the damage Arnie did to the couch that was originally part of the  _Bull Durham_  set. Drama takes the menu board seriously, and starts writing out what he plans to cook on the days that he comes over.  
  
That’s actually kind of nice, knowing what they’ll be having, but Drama leaves the chalk lying around and Turtle just can’t resist. So soon there are new requests: Salmon with Mango Spread becomes Jessica Biel with Legs Spread; Spaghetti and Meatballs becomes Suck My Meaty Balls; and then, one day, Coq Au Vin becomes Cock Au Vince.  
  
Drama sees it first, while Turtle’s sitting at the table finishing off the fancy lemon-liquor drink that Drama made with dinner the night before. “Aw, come on, have some class,” he says, and Turtle snickers.  
  
“What’s the problem?” Vince walks in next, E right behind him, carrying a paper sack that probably means they made an impromptu liquor store stop. Everyone was a fan of the limoncello. Vince laughs. “Look, E, your favorite,” he says, and Turtle chokes on his drink.  
  
“Yeah, but I had that last night,” E says, turning and dropping the bag on the counter. “Be a little creative, Drama, huh?”  
  
“Hey, you think I did that?” Drama says. “That’s all Turtle.”  
  
E turns to him. “Wishful thinking? Want a little taste?”  
  
“That shit ain’t funny,” Turtle says, though Vince is still laughing.  
  
“Come on, man, 20,000 girls can’t be wrong,” Vince says, and E elbows him.  
  
“Twenty-thousand? Jesus, I should’ve had you tested every day,” E says.  
  
“The Chase men have always been STD-resistant,” Drama says. Vince takes a seat at the table across from Turtle. “We come from hearty stock.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s great,” E says. “You ought to market that: the Chase Family Miracle Cock.”  
  
“Can we please have a conversation that isn’t about Vince’s cock?” Turtle says.  
  
“You started it,” E says.  
  
“Turtle’s right,” Vince says, grinning. He leans forward with a leer. “Wanna talk about E’s?”  
  
Turtle knocks back the rest of his drink, says, “Fuck you guys, I’m hanging with a real man,” and takes Arnold outside for a walk.  
  
The block is pretty dull; the houses around Vince’s all have high fences and gates, but he hits paydirt on the next block over, where two girls in shorts and bikini tops are walking their own dog. He and Arnold follow them for a while, and even Arnold seems to appreciate their nice, tight little asses. They have a poodle, though, which is never a good sign, and too soon they turn into a long, gated driveway.  
  
“So much for that,” Turtle says, and Arnold pants. “Me, too, pal. Let’s go home.”  
  
They detour on the way when a couple of kids make friends with Arnold and Turtle nearly gets his shoulder jerked out of the socket. He’s still rubbing it when he walks in to the house. Drama’s in the kitchen, pouring wine over chicken and singing disastrously with an opera CD. “Hey!” he yells, when Arnold shakes himself off in the doorway. “What happened to him?”  
  
“Kids had a sprinkler out,” Turtle says. “Fucking L.A., man, don’t they ever get winter?”  
  
“Get him the fuck out of here, Turtle, and dry him off,” Drama says. “Jesus, you want dog flavor in your dinner?”  
  
“I want some fucking peace around here,” Turtle says.  
  
He leads Arnold down the hall and gets a beach towel from the linen closet to dry him off. After five minutes, he decides he’s done what he can, and gives Arnold a bone and sends him toward the kitchen. Then he takes the towel to the laundry room, because he doesn’t want to have to hear E bitching about how managing the house means taking care of the fucking house ever again.  
  
The laundry room is at the other end of the hall, the opposite side from Vince’s bedroom. Turtle swings the door open. “What the fuck?”  
  
E is standing in front of the dryer, shirt pulled up, pants pulled down, pale ass exposed, one of Vince’s tan legs around his waist, Vince balanced on the dryer in front of him in a similar state of undress. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Turtle says, and slams the door. He leaves the towel on the floor outside, walks right past Drama, picks up Arnold’s leash, and heads back outside.  
  
This time, there are no hot girls to distract him, so he walks to a park, ties Arnold to a bench, smokes a joint, and stays there until it starts getting dark. He thinks about what it used to be like, how if he saw a hot girl Vince would be the first one to whistle along, how when they were kids everything they wanted could be summed up by the poster of Elle McPherson over E’s bed. How in the fuck did guys like that turn into guys like this?  
  
When he gets back, Drama’s car is missing, but E’s car isn’t. Turtle hopes they’ve gone to bed or called a car to take them to an all-night gay orgy or something. It’s probably too much to ask.  
  
Drama left some chicken for him in the refrigerator, and Turtle puts the plate in the microwave and rummages for silverware in the dark, trying to be quiet. As it is, he’s not quiet enough, apparently, because E appears in the kitchen before the timer sounds.  
  
“Where’d you go, man? We were starting to worry,” he says, leaning on the counter, all arms-crossed-cool-casual.  
  
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Turtle says. “I’m gonna need therapy for the rest of my life, prob’ly, but I’m fine.”  
  
Eric shrugs. “You could learn to knock.”  
  
“On the laundry room door?” Turtle takes his plate out of the microwave. It’s too hot to eat yet so he stirs the pieces around with a fork. “Just in case the washer might be taking it up the ass from the dryer?”  
  
“Turtle, it’s not like we wanted you to walk in on us,” E says.  
  
“Whatever,” Turtle says. He picks up his plate and starts out of the kitchen, but E stops him.  
  
“What is your problem?”  
  
“My problem is I know way too much about your sex life, E,” Turtle says. “I live with you guys, that doesn’t mean I want to be, like, a silent partner or something.”  
  
“Jesus, it was one time,” E says. “Like I haven’t seen you with girls over the years, like we all haven’t.”  
  
“Yeah, you know what, that’s different,” Turtle says.  
  
Eric crosses his arms again. “Yeah, how?”  
  
“Because they’re girls, E,” he says, almost shouting. “They aren’t Vince.”  
  
“What are you, jealous?” E asks.  
  
“Fuck you, I’m not a fag!” Turtle yells. “And I’m sick and goddamned tired of you two prancing around macking on each other all the time. That shit is sick, man, I don’t need to see it.”  
  
“You said -” Eric starts, his voice very low.  
  
“Yeah, well, I lied,” Turtle says. “You kept it secret for fifteen fucking years and now you can’t keep your hands off each other for five minutes?”  
  
E’s arms stay crossed, and this time, his mouth stays closed. Turtle walks out of the kitchen without saying anything else. By the time he reaches the door, his anger is running 50/50 with his guilt. He slams the door to his room, trying to stir up a little more righteous rage. He lives here, damn it, he shouldn’t have to see this shit.   
  
The next day, he just avoids them both. He gets up the next morning and waits until he hears E’s car pull away, then showers and drives over to Drama’s place. They smoke up and spend the afternoon watching Kung-Fu movies. When Turtle asks if he can crash there, Drama says sure. “But you’re buying your own beer,” he says, and Turtle agrees.  
  
They go out that night to a bar that Drama likes, where the waitresses wear bikini tops and lean over every time they serve you, and at midnight the place turns into a hip-hop strip joint. “I miss this stuff,” Turtle says after his third drink.  
  
“What, titty bars?” Drama asks.  
  
Turtle shrugs. “Just normal guy shit,” he says, and orders another drink.  
  
“Why? It’s not like you never go out,” Drama says. He lowers his voice. “And you heard them, they both still like girls, too.”  
  
“But with those guys — it’s like they’re fucking married,” Turtle says. “You know how E gets — he’s not even looking anymore. And if I say anything to Vince, it’s like I’m encouraging him to cheat or something.” He shakes his head. “It’s just fucking weird.”  
  
“Yeah, I get that,” Drama says. “But what can you do?”  
  
By the next morning, Turtle’s come to a solution. All that’s left to do is talk it over. He rides with Drama to breakfast, because he needs a buffer. Remembering their last conversation, Turtle figures he’ll probably be lucky if E doesn’t try and pop him one; worse yet, since he called E names, Vince might be pissed.  
  
Things are predictably quiet at the table; E’s sitting next to Vince, both of them looking over the newspaper. They aren’t touching, and Turtle’s suddenly not sure whether that’s normal or not.  
  
Drama keeps up conversation on his own, for a while, talking about the egg dish he wants to try. Turtle takes a seat across from Vince but keeps his head down. “Look, about the other night,” he says, and he sees E’s head come up in his peripheral vision. “I – I said some stuff I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call you – anything bad,” he says.  
  
“All right,” E says. Turtle looks up and sees that, while E’s face is pretty blank, just his regular you’re-a-fuckup expression, Vince hasn’t looked up from the paper.  
  
Drama brings over a big dish of eggs with onions, then shoves a plate at each guy. He takes the seat next to him. “What’s going on?”  
  
Turtle clears his throat. “I’m, uh, I been thinking about this,” he says. “And I think, maybe, it’d be best, it’s a good idea – I think I ought to move out,” he says, and then Vince’s head snaps up.  
  
“What?”  
  
Turtle shrugs. “I mean, I’ve got some money now, with this house manager thing – and I could keep that up, that’s not a problem, unless you don’t want me to. And, you know, I got some contacts over at Arista, now, I might be able to get something doing development there.” He shrugs again, and looks away from the surprise and hurt on Vince’s face. “Anyway, I thought maybe I’d start looking today.”  
  
“I can hook you up with a good realtor,” Drama says. “You looking to rent or buy?”  
  
“Rent,” Turtle says. “No way I’ve got enough to buy.”  
  
Drama takes over the conversation after that, giving Turtle a list of good sources in which to find decent rental properties and then starting in on the history of each different neighborhood in L.A. Vince gets up halfway through and walks out of the kitchen, and E follows pretty quickly after. Turtle stays for the whole talk, though, keeps asking Drama questions, until Drama says, “But seriously, man, why would you want to move out?”  
  
“You try living here,” Turtle says. “It’s like living with a gay Sonny and Cher.”  
  
That afternoon, Vince comes in while Turtle’s playing Crash of the Titans on the Wii. He takes a seat next to him, and Turtle nudges the bong on the coffee table with his foot. Vince tokes, holds, then says, “Seriously, this is about the laundry room thing?”  
  
“No,” Turtle says. “Not entirely.”  
  
“You really that uncomfortable about this whole thing?”  
  
Turtle shrugs. He knows he should say he’s not, knows that’s what Vince expects, but he can’t quite do it. They haven’t spent too much time lying to each other before this, why start now? “I just don’t get it,” Turtle says.  
  
“We’re still -”  
  
“Yeah, you’re the same guys when you’re apart,” Turtle says. “But you’re never fucking apart, Vin. You’re on each other 24/7. And man, I love you, but it’s fucking weird.”  
  
“Look,” Vince says, after another hit. “What if we cool it? What if we, I mean, we can be quieter. More subtle. Would you stay then?”  
  
“Vince, man,” Turtle says. “You know, you shouldn’t have to be that way in your own house. I get that. So I just, maybe it would be better if I wasn’t here.”  
  
Vince turns, but he doesn’t seem to be looking at Turtle. “This is why we didn’t tell you,” he says. “E thought it would be weird.”  
  
“What did you think?”  
  
“I thought, you’ve been my friend since forever,” Vince says. “I didn’t think it’d be a big deal.”  
  
“I get that it shouldn’t be,” Turtle says. “And man, I want you guys to be happy. I just — it’s hard, it’s weird for me. Don’t you think it’d be easier for everyone if I got a little space? You guys must want some privacy.”  
  
Vince takes a deep breath. “We wouldn’t get that. If you go, he goes,” Vince says. “I can’t just live in a house with my manager. I can’t do that. It’d be like telling everyone. While you’re here, it’s cool, we’re all just hanging out.” He takes another hit and holds it for a very long time. “I know, I have no right to ask you, man, but – please stay. Would you stay? We’ll be cool, man, we’ll be better.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Turtle says. “I gotta think, all right?”  
  
Vince nods. “All right.” He hands the lighter back and stands up, walks out, and Turtle hears the door to the deck open and close. He closes his eyes. I am an ass, he thinks. I am completely an ass. It’s true, what he said. He does want Vince to be happy, and E. They deserve it. It’s just so weird. It used to be the three of them against the world. Vince came up with plans and E made them happen and Turtle was like the brute strength, or the comic relief. He was the guy in the movie that provided the life-saving diversion for the hero. He liked that role. When they added Drama, made it a foursome, Turtle’s place in the family stayed pretty much the same, though he seemed to move up a little in E’s book.  
  
Now, though, he gets a feeling like Vince and E don’t need someone running interference. They have their own stuff. They practically have their own world. Turtle’s always been a third wheel with the business stuff, but that was cool because he was the guy Vince could party with, the guy Vince called first to go clubbing or shopping or whatever. Now, Turtle’s not sure what his role is, because it seems like E fills everything for Vince.   
  
He calls Drama and asks if he can crash over there for another night, because if he’s going to think about this he needs to be out of it for a while. Drama says fine and tells him to bring more beer, so Turtle packs up a couple shirts and shorts and grabs a six-pack out of the fridge.  
  
E’s waiting outside.  
  
“I’ll drive you,” he says, and Turtle squints.  
  
“You gonna roll me off a cliff?”  
  
The keys to E’s car zing through the air, and Turtle barely catches them. “You drive,” E says.  
  
“Vince coming?” Turtle asks.  
  
“Just you and me,” E says. “Come on.”  
  
He doesn’t want to do it, knows it’s a trap, but he goes, anyway, because really, he doesn’t want to make anything worse. And E can’t punch him while he’s driving.  
  
They hit the street, and Turtle clears his throat. “So you gonna yell at me?” he asks. “Or take a swing or something?”  
  
“I should,” E says. “He was in therapy for that kind of crap, hearing people say it’s not OK.”   
  
“That’s what that was about?” Turtle asks.  
  
E nods. “We tried to stop,” he says. “It didn’t work so well.”  
  
There’s nothing really that Turtle can say to that. Vince was messed up for a while, and then he got better. Turtle does the math in his head and guesses that most of the improvement started around the time Vince and E got together for real.  
  
“So if I leave, and you have to leave,” Turtle says, and E shrugs.  
  
“He’d be OK,” he says. “We’d still be like we are, it’d just be less convenient.”  
  
Turtle expected E to be much less philosophical about the loss. “Do you think I should move out?”  
  
“No,” he says. “But I think you should be able to if you want to.” He clears his throat. “Did you know Bobby Brixton worked Vince over in ninth grade?”  
  
Turtle remembers Brixton, a dumb fuck who sat the bench on the football squad and liked to talk about everybody’s mothers. “Shit,” he says, because Brixton was as big as he was dumb. “Motherfucker, I woulda -”  
  
“Me, too,” E says quietly. “But I didn’t know.”  
  
Turtle grips the wheel harder. “What are you trying to say, E?”  
  
“I would do anything for Vince,” he says. “And so would you. And he’d do anything for either of us. And you and me, we fight, man, we joke around, give each other a hard time, but at the end of the day — I know you’d be the guy beside me in that fight. And I’d have your back in anything.”  
  
“Yeah,” Turtle says.  
  
“But here’s the thing,” E says. “I don’t care if you stay or go. If you stay, I can probably promise you won’t walk in on anything like the other day again, because that’s common sense, common courtesy, I get that. But in my own house, I’m not watching what I say, and I don’t want to worry that every time I touch Vince you’re gonna roll your eyes or flinch or throw up. I’ve had enough — we’ve both had enough of that shit to last a lifetime.”  
  
Turtle turns into the lot at Drama’s complex. “Look,” he says. “I don’t — I don’t want you to be, uh, I get that. You shouldn’t have to cool it or whatever. It’s just,” he says, and then he pauses. He doesn’t know how to explain it very well. “I don’t have any experience with this stuff,” he says. “I never been around gay guys before.”  
  
“Me either,” E says.  
  
“It’s sort of like you and Vince learned this new language, and I don’t get it yet. Like when you guys figured out pig Latin before I did?” Eric smirks. “I just don’t know how to play along yet.”  
  
“Can you learn?” E asks. His face, for once, isn’t closed down. He’s really asking, Turtle can see. He really wants this. And at the end of the day, he’s right, they are family.  
  
Turtle shrugs, but he can see that’s not good enough. “I can try,” he says. “I can try harder.”


	9. SEPTEMBER: People Come Around

Turtle stays and he does his best, and he can tell Vince and E are on their best behavior, too. He feels progressively worse, watching them flinch when he walks into a room, sometimes, watching Vince retreat a little from his usual, sloppily affectionate self. One night, he walks into the living room and Vince and E snap apart on the couch.  
  
“Jesus, all right,” Turtle says. “If I make out with Drama will you forgive me and go back to how things were before?”  
  
E snorts beer through his nose, and after Vince is done hitting him on the back he leaves his hand there. After that things are pretty much cool again. They spend a lot of time hanging out at home, the four of them like before, and Drama stays over half the time because he’s not working at the moment. Sometimes they go out and Vince deflects girls Turtle’s way, so in a way things are even better.  
  
One Thursday, Drama has an appointment to see Lloyd, and Turtle agrees to go with him because his day is otherwise empty. “Maybe before we can go see if Rex got that new sound-system in for my car,” Turtle says. “Then see Lloyd and do your stuff.”  
  
Vince looks up from his eggs. “So you guys are gonna be gone all day?” he asks.  
  
“Yeah, you want to meet for lunch or something?”  
  
Vince’s eyes narrow. E walks in, and he turns. “E, the guys are going to be gone all day.”  
  
E stops. “All day?”  
  
Drama shrugs. “I got a meeting with Lloyd, Turtle wants to check on his sound system, I want to see my butcher in Culver City…”  
  
“You have a butcher?” Turtle asks.  
  
“We don’t have to leave the house today, do we, E?”  
  
E shrugs. “Ari’s gonna wanna hear your thoughts about  _Las Cruces_  pretty soon.”  
  
“He’s not gonna want to hear my thoughts,” Vince says, “so fuck him.” He grins and raises his eyebrows, and Turtle thinks he sees E blushing. “So again, I ask: do we have anything to do today?”  
  
“I’m sure we can think of something,” E says.  
  
“OK,” Turtle says. “I get it, the cats’ll be away, you two want to break out the whips and chains.”  
  
“Chains?” E says, pouring cereal. “Who said anything about chains?”  
  
Vince laughs. “Just don’t come home early, all right? Take a long lunch, on me, anywhere you want.”  
  
“Anywhere?” Drama says.  
  
Which is how they end up at The Palm. Vince’s name and his AmEx Black get them a table with a very small wait, and Turtle orders the Tenderloin Fillets. “At lunch? Isn’t that a little heavy?” Drama complains, and asks for the Seared Ahi salad.  
  
They’re halfway through the meal when Ari shows up at their table. He waves off a woman in a sharp black suit, sits next to Drama, and says, “If it isn’t my favorite fuckups from Queens. Where’s the mayor of Munchkinland?”  
  
Turtle shrugs. “E’s at home,” he says.  
  
“At home.” He rubs his face. “I’ve called four times today. That’s four minutes I could’ve used to go down on Babs, making her happy so I wouldn’t have to work all these long hours schmoozing fucking soap opera stars just because she wants a client list the length of my ten-foot cock.”  
  
“Sorry, man,” Turtle says, taking another bite of steak. It’s fucking amazing; he barely even has to chew. “Maybe they just don’t want to talk.”  
  
Ari crosses his arms. “I get paid to talk to people who don’t want to talk to me.” He signals the waitress by snapping frantically. “Yeah, these two want their check. They’re leaving.”  
  
“Hey,” Drama protests, “I was gonna get dessert.”  
  
“I’ll buy you a fucking ice cream cone on the way,” Ari says.   
  
“The way to where?”  
  
“Home, jerkoff. E doesn’t call me back, I’ll fucking come to him.” He sniffs. “Jesus, what is that, Drama, the tuna? You on a diet?”  
  
“Ari,” Turtle says, “you can’t just come home with us. We’re actually not headed home right now.”  
  
“Yeah, change of plans,” Ari says. He snaps his fingers again. “Hello, do you work for money or just the glamour of being fucked by Colin Farrel in the bathroom, sweetheart? Yeah, thank you.” He takes the AmEx out of Turtle’s hand and passes it over.  
  
Drama clears his throat. “I have a meeting with my agent,” he says. “I can’t just –“  
  
“I own your agent,” Ari says. “And I will have him call you. But I know everything Lloyd knows, Drama, and if you want to know what we know, you’ll take me to your leader right-the-fuck now.”  
  
“You know, E’s been sick,” Turtle says. “I bet that’s why he’s not answering.”  
  
“Sick?”  
  
“Oh, yeah,” Drama says, “he’s got, like, some nasty bug. Real contagious.”  
  
“Yeah, in fact, I’m not feeling so great myself,” Turtle says. “Look, Ari, we promise we’ll tell him as soon as we’re home –“  
  
“I paid an elderly woman 3,000 dollars to die so I could get my flu shot this year,” Ari says. When he leans forward, his eyes flash. “I’ve had so many fucking B-12 shots recently that I could survive Ebola. So let’s go take E some chicken soup for the soul, huh?”   
  
They’re on the sidewalk waiting for their car five minutes later. Turtle grabs his phone and dials Vince’s number. As it rings, Ari grabs his arm.  
  
“Don’t you dare fucking tell them I’m on the way,” Ari says. “They’ll tunnel out or something.”  
  
Turtle clears his throat as his call goes to voicemail. “Uh, hey, Vin, it’s Turtle. Just checking in.” Ari nods. “Actually, Drama and I were on our way home. Uh. To hang out. With you. The four of us. So if you’re doing anything that would, you know, keep us from all hanging out together, maybe you could stop?” Ari’s glaring at him like he’s just grown another head. Turtle turns away from him and walks around to the driver’s seat. “See you soon, Vince.”  
  
He tries E’s phone, too, and then the house line, where he leaves another message, hoping the answering machine will broadcast it. Jesus, if they’re in the pool… “Look, Ari, we can’t –“  
  
“Is something going on?” Ari asks from the passenger’s seat; Drama’s been relegated to the back. “You can tell me, you know. If Vince and E are secretly packing up a bunch of drug mules –“  
  
“Nothing’s going on!” Turtle says. “Anyone ever tell you you’re fucking paranoid, Ari?”  
  
“Anyone ever tell you to shut the fuck up and drive, Turtle? And is this where you got the name?” Ari leans forward and drums his hands on the dash. “My golf cart goes faster than this.”  
  
By the time they pull into the house, Turtle’s tried calling Vince three more times. He’s sent two text messages. He’s done everything but drive the car off the road trying to convince Ari this isn’t a good idea.  
  
He throws the car in park and hops out before it’s even stopped rolling, hits the front door hard and yells, “Vince, E, Ari wants to see you, Ari’s here!” as loud as he can.  
  
“Yeah, what the fuck, Turtle,” Ari says, walking in behind him. “Jesus, is this what happens when you don’t get your morning weed? Can I pitch in or something?”  
  
Turtle swallows, then ducks into the kitchen. It’s empty, just the bowls from breakfast still lying around. He turns back to the foyer. “Drama, you want to get Ari a drink or something? One of your fruit tarts, maybe? In the kitchen?”  
  
“What is this, are we courting now?” Ari asks. “You gonna give me the  _Architectural Digest_  tour or just blow me here?”  
  
He starts toward the living room, and Turtle winces and has to cover his eyes. If Vince and E are sleeping – or worse – on the big couch, Ari will see them in the next five seconds. “I thought you said they were home!” Ari yells, and Turtle breathes a sigh of relief.   
  
“Maybe they decided to go somewhere,” Turtle says, stepping into the living room. It’s empty, though there’s a T-shirt crumpled over the back of the couch and the pillows have been shifted around. Nothing that screams gay, though.  
  
“Yeah, we aren’t babysitters,” Drama says.  
  
“Yeah, well maybe you – hey, there’s my man!”  
  
Turtle turns and sees Vince walk out of his bedroom, wearing his robe and rubbing his eyes like he’s just been sleeping. “Hey, guys. Ari,” he says, wandering into the living room. “What’s up, I thought you were meeting at the agency.”  
  
“Change of plans, man,” Ari says. “You just get up? You got the same bug E’s got?”  
  
“Bug?” Vince says, at the same moment that Turtle looks up to see E descending the stairs. He’s freshly showered and wearing jeans and a T-shirt, the fucking picture of health.  
  
“E,” Turtle says. “You feeling better, man?”  
  
“I feel fine,” E says.  
  
“That’s funny, Eric, because the guys here told me you weren’t taking my calls because you had SARS,” Ari says.  
  
“Food poisoning,” E says, his face instantly hard, his usual Ari expression.   
  
Ari lifts the shirt from the couch. “You got a new girl, E? You weren’t just blowing me off for some pussy, were you? You remember how that turned out last time.”  
  
“No girl,” E says.  
  
“That’s mine,” Vince says. “Late night. What’s going on, Ari?”  
  
“Yeah, don’t try and tell me you stopped in to show how much you care,” E says.  
  
“I do care, E, I care because I’ve got a hundred-million-dollar movie sitting on my desk, waiting to put Vince’s name back in the big lights, and neither my client nor his fucking manager are taking my calls.” Ari turns to Vince. It’s funny, really, how quickly his expression can change, from anger to something that Turtle thinks of as ass-kissage. “So what do you say, Vin, we gonna make a movie or what?”  
  
Vince shrugs. “I don’t know, Ari. You said there’d be a re-write?”  
  
“Absolutely. Absolutely. They’re talking about bringing in Peter Morgan to go through it, the studio’s already got that planned. Anything you want, baby, we’ll get it but they won’t green-light without your name behind it.”  
  
Vince sighs and looks at E, and E shrugs. “It’s not amazing,” he says, “but it has some cool stuff. And working with Fincher…”  
  
“And I got you ten,” Ari says. “For fifty days’ work, man.”  
  
“All right,” Vince says. “Contingent upon the re-write, though, it’s gotta be quality.”  
  
“You bet,” Ari says, shaking his hand. “I’ll tell them you want pages as soon as they happen.”  
  
“Do that,” E says.   
  
“You’ll come by and sign tomorrow morning? Fax me a fake tonight?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” E agrees.  
  
“You want a drink or something?” Vince asks.  
  
“No, I gotta get back to work,” Ari says. “Lloyd’s on his way.”  
  
“All right, man, take it easy,” Vince says, and he and Ari slap hands, and Ari turns to walk out. He stops at the threshold, just when Turtle’s starting to breathe again. “E, food poisoning?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You allergic to something?”  
  
E shrugs. “No. What, you wanted to order some?”  
  
“So that’s not a hive on your neck, there,” he says, pointing. Turtle’s eyes follow his finger and see it, a hickey forming just under E’s earlobe.   
  
E reaches up and touches his neck. “What?” he says, nearly snarls. “What’s your problem, Ari?”  
  
“My problem is, you don’t answer your phone, Vince doesn’t answer his, you’re home alone, together, that’s your ugly-ass children’s size T-shirt on the couch, you’ve got a hickey, and Tweedledumb and Dumber here are scared to death I’m going to walk in and surprise you at something.” Ari puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head, then crosses his arms. “My problem is you’re fucking my client, Eric.”  
  
“Jesus, Ari, jump to conclusions much?” E says. Turtle looks at Vince, who’s staring at Ari in a strange, curious way. “It’s not my shirt. Vince had a girl here last night. I probably knocked my head on the toilet, throwing up. Tell me how that adds up to me fucking Vince.”  
  
“You know what else adds up? Vince hasn’t been on the market recently.” Ari paces forward into the room, his arms still crossed tight except when one hand jabs out at E to make a point. “Usually I get four calls a week from girls, saying they know, in the Biblical sense, Vincent Chase, can I get them a walk-on somewhere, but the last few months, nada. Fuck, just getting that premiere set up with the model was like negotiating the Cuban fucking Missile Crisis.”  
  
“So he’s more savvy -”  
  
“E,” Vince says, his voice slightly amused, “it’s all right. He knows.”  
  
“I - I do?” Ari says, and Turtle watches his face flicker through emotions he recognizes: anger, fear, maybe a second of disgust, before he settles on surprise. “Holy fuck, I’m right?”  
  
E looks at Vince, then laughs. “All right. Yeah. Yeah, Ari, welcome to the club.”  
  
“You’re seriously — the two of you — I need to sit down,” Ari says. “I need to sit down and I need a big fucking glass of whiskey, Drama, right now.”  
  
“I got it,” Turtle says, and he goes to the bar. He pours from a bottle of E’s favorite stuff, one for Ari, one for himself, and after a glance back he gets one for E, too. Ari’s on the couch, and Vince has taken a seat in the armchair. Turtle hands the whiskey over to E, who takes it with a grateful nod and then sits on the arm of Vince’s chair. After he gives Ari his drink, Turtle stands by Drama in the doorway, ready to make a quick escape if Ari’s packing.  
  
Ari gulps the whiskey. “OK. Jesus. You guys are fucking. I don’t suppose if I said stop, that would do anything?”  
  
“No dice,” Vince says. “And it’s not just fucking.”  
  
“Please, no details,” Ari says. “I get enough gay sex in my life from the tap I have on Lloyd’s phone.” He rubs his forehead with his thumb, really seems to be straining over a thought, or maybe over holding a thought back. “So, this is, what, like a buddy-fucking deal? He’s your piece on the side, Vince, tell me that’s it, tell me the only thing I need to do here is arrange some super-secret HIV tests.”  
  
“Ari,” E says, “it’s not a casual thing.”  
  
“And now that you know, can we can it with the girls?” Vince says.  
  
Ari keeps rubbing his face. “Maybe another drink?” Drama murmurs.  
  
“Fuck that, I’m not going near him,” Turtle says.  
  
“How long?” Ari asks.  
  
Vince looks at E. “Almost a year, seriously,” he says.  
  
“Yeah, happy anniversary,” Ari says. “Who’s seen you?”  
  
“What?”  
  
Every word seems to be causing Ari pain. “You’re good kids, but you’re clearly dumb as fuck,” he says, “so let’s get a list, right now, of the places you’ve been where you couldn’t keep a leash on it, so I can start making some calls.”  
  
E blinks. “Nowhere,” he says. “Jesus, we’re not that dumb, Ari.”  
  
“Evidence to the contrary,” Ari says. “Who else knows?”  
  
“Just these guys,” E says.  
  
“That’s it? Have you two told anyone?” Ari asks, whirling toward them.  
  
“No way, man,” Turtle says.  
  
“I swear on my mother’s grave,” Drama says.  
  
“Your mother isn’t dead,” Ari says.   
  
“My, uh, therapist,” Vince says, and when Ari curses, he says, “Hey, you sent me to rehab.”  
  
Ari pauses, then nods frantically. “So, OK. Legally she can’t say anything, and then we’re it.” He turns briefly to face Turtle and Drama. “I swear to you now, if one of you two fuckups breathes a word of this to anyone, I don’t care if you’re being tortured or in the throes of passion with some chesty hooker, I will know it was you that leaked it and I will kill you. Raise your hands if you doubt that.”  
  
Turtle is afraid to move, and when Ari turns back to Vince and E, he drinks the rest of his whiskey in one gulp.  
  
“Harsh, Ari,” Vince says.  
  
“Was it? Christ, I’m going to have to up my blood pressure meds just to survive this as it is, and when it does come out — look, maybe I should be the one to tell Shauna.”  
  
“No,” E says, setting his glass down. “No one knows. The more people we tell -”  
  
“Yeah, that was a nice strategy when it was just the two of you and the afterglow,” Ari says, “but now it’s time to wake the fuck up. We need a strategy for when this breaks.”  
  
“ _When_  it breaks?” Vince says.  
  
“Oh, come on, even you guys aren’t this naive,” Ari snaps. “Yes, when, Vince. You know that old saying, a secret can be kept between two people if one of them kills the other? Well, unless you’re willing to cap us all -”  
  
“Don’t tempt me,” E says.  
  
“— then we need a strategy, and right the fuck now. We need to get Shauna in on this, so that when — when — someone from TMZ picks up your private cell conversation, or some maid sells pictures of E’s underwear on your bedroom floor to  _US Weekly_ , or fucking Turtle takes a million dollar book deal to spill it to the world, we have a plan. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life playing the gay best friend or the creepy uncle.”  
  
Vince stands up. “You want to strategize my sex life?”  
  
Ari’s expression is absolutely deadpan. “I thought it was more than sex, Vince. But if that’s it, man, please tell me, because I can get you way finer ass than this, and for less than ten percent, too.”  
  
E launches off the armchair, but Vince grabs his arm before he can get too far and hauls him around. He says something into E’s ear, and E grits his teeth — Turtle can almost hear it from where he’s standing — and then walks right out of the living room. Drama follows at a wave from Vince, but Turtle stays put. This is a face-off he wants to watch.   
  
Vince looks at Ari and spreads his hands out over the back of the armchair. “Ari, get out,” he says.  
  
“You have to see how stupid this is.”  
  
“Get out, right now,” Vince says.  
  
“Vince, this is a death move, this is -”  
  
“If you want to have a job with me, then you’re leaving right now,” Vince says. “We will come to your office, tomorrow morning, and we will talk about this, maybe even like grownups, maybe even without the name-calling, but if you don’t leave right now I’m gonna walk out, and E can come in here and fire you. And maybe punch you. He’s been working out. You wanna go?”  
  
Ari opens his mouth, then closes it. He stands up, walks to the doorway by Turtle, and pauses.   
  
“Keep going,” Turtle says, and after a moment, with his hand over his mouth, Ari does.  
  
When the front door slams, Vince’s head drops. Turtle hears him take a deep breath. “Vince, man,” he says, and Vince raises one hand and waves, like he’s OK. But he’s not; how could he be? This has to be in the top five nightmares for him. It’s certainly close for Turtle. The idea of the whole world knowing about this — well, it’s hard to take. Turtle’s not even sure what it would mean, and he’s damn sure it’s not going to be a good thing.  
  
“Look, things’ll work out,” he says, and Vince glances over. “Uh, you wanna smoke, or something? Chill for a minute?”  
  
Vince shrugs. “I probably need to go talk E down,” he says. He taps Turtle’s arm on the way out. “But thanks, man.”  
  
Turtle says “Anytime,” and watches Vince walk out with the same feeling he’s had all year: he wishes he could help, he wishes he could figure things out, he wishes things were just simple again.  
  


* * *

  
  
The meeting the next day goes about how Turtle expects. He and Drama sit in the waiting room, and they hear certain shouted phrases — “since fucking high school?!!” and a lot of cursing — and when Vince and E walk out they both look like they’ve been knocked around. They don’t talk much about it, except to say that Ari repeated his verdict that they should simply stop and shape up, and that he wants to work on a plan for what they’ll do when it leaks.  
  
“And he wants to book a bunch of stuff as far in advance as possible,” E says, rubbing his forehead. “Which means a shitload of reading.”  
  
“He says I won’t be as bankable if people find out,” Vince says.  
  
“You tell him to go fuck himself?” Turtle asks. “Lots of other agents, Vin.”  
  
Vince glances over and smirks. “People come around,” he says, and Turtle has to smile.


	10. OCTOBER: The Long Ride Home

The movie Vince filmed in Austria last fall opens to critical acclaim and good box-office numbers, and even E seems to be in a good mood all the time, or at least ready to take some time out for fun. They go to the driving range one afternoon to help Drama get ready for a scene in his new film. Though he’ll be playing a clerk at the pro shop, he insists that he needs to understand “the fine nuances of the sweet science in order to completely invest in the character.”  
  
“The sweet science is boxing,” Turtle says.  
  
“Really?” Vince asks. He bends to drop a ball on the tee. “It sounds sort of sexual, doesn’t it?” His voice drops, turns to a sugary purr. “The sweet science,” he murmurs.  
  
“No fair trying to throw E off his game,” Drama says, and Turtle watches E roll his eyes.  
  
“I’m feeling good about this,” E says. “Anybody wanna bet? Longest drive wins.”  
  
Vince grins. “I’m in,” he says, his smile wolfish.  
  
“What are we betting?” Turtle asks.  
  
“Fifty?” E suggests. “Best of ten?”  
  
“All right.”  
  
“Not for me, gentlemen,” Drama says, sitting back on the bench behind the tees. “I’m just observing today.”  
  
E wins four; Vince takes one. Turtle drops out. “Like either of you need my money,” he says, joining Drama on the bench.  
  
“One more?” Vince asks.  
  
“Yeah,” E says, “but I don’t want your money.”  
  
Vince’s smile turns absolutely predatory. “Oh yeah? What, then?”  
  
“You know what.”  
  
Vince laughs. “Let’s go.”  
  
Drama leans over. “What do you think that’s about?”  
  
“I do not want to know,” Turtle says, and he watches E knock a ball 225 yards.  
  
Vince is a gracious loser, and Turtle strikes up a conversation with Drama about his upcoming audition just so he can’t hear Vince and E teasing each other on the way back to the clubhouse. They go to dinner – E’s treat, on the money he won – and then drive back to the house. Vince grabs E the minute they’re in the door and pulls him toward the bedroom, both of them laughing, buzzed from the drinks at dinner, probably. “No interruptions, guys, OK?” Vince calls before the door shuts.  
  
Drama and Turtle stand in the hall for a minute, then Drama says, “I think that’s my cue,” and leaves.   
  
Turtle gets a beer from the fridge and settles in for some HDTV, skipping the golf channels completely and heading straight for the porn. He figures Vince and E won’t be surfacing all night, so he jacks off on the couch, then cleans up and switches to a movie channel  
  
At 10, the house phone rings, and Turtle picks it up. There’s a New York prefix on the caller ID. “Yeah?”  
  
“Eric?” The voice is female, older, with a hometown accent.  
  
“Uh, no, this is Turtle,” he says, sitting up. “Who’s this?”  
  
“Turtle, this is Eric’s aunt, Emily. Is he there?”  
  
“Uh, yeah, hey, Emily. He’s here, but he’s kinda busy, uh, sleeping, right now. Could I have him call you back?”  
  
“Well, dear, no, it’s really an emergency. Do you think I could talk to him just for a moment?”  
  
Turtle looks down the hall and mutes the TV. Vince’s door is closed, but there are no sounds. “Yeah, just hold on a minute, Emily,” he says. He puts the call on hold, then carries the phone down the hall and knocks on Vince’s door. “Hey, guys?” he calls.  
  
“Go away, Turtle!” Vince yells.  
  
“Yeah, uh, E, there’s a call for you.”  
  
“Kinda busy!”  
  
“It’s an emergency,” he says, knocking again. “Come on!”  
  
He hears shifting noises behind the door, and after a moment, it opens, and E’s standing there in just his shorts. He’s sweaty and tousled, and Turtle averts his eyes from E’s bare chest. “If it’s Ari I’m gonna kill you both,” he says.  
  
“It’s your aunt Emily,” Turtle says, handing him the phone. “Calling from New York, she said it’s important.”  
  
E takes the phone. “Aunt Emily?” he says. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“E, what’s going on?” Vince calls, and E puts a finger in his ear and pushes past Turtle to walk down the hall. “E?”  
  
“He went to take his phone call,” Turtle says around the door. “Family emergency.”  
  
“Oh, shit.” Turtle hears the sheets rustling and starts to turn away, himself, but then Vince calls his name. “Uh, can you come help me?”  
  
“Help you with what?” Turtle asks, and he pushes the door open.  
  
Vince is lying in his bed, naked, just as sweaty and tousled as E, but with one exception: his hands have been tied to the headboard with what look like two silk neckties. Turtle isn’t sure whether to laugh, cover his eyes, or grab his camera.  
  
“Come on,” Vince says, jerking his hands.  
  
“Maybe you should wait for E,” Turtle says.  
  
“What, you’ve never seen a cock before?” Vince says. “Help me.”  
  
So Turtle does, working at the closest knot with thick, clumsy fingers, struggling to untie it while not looking at Vince. “Jesus, what is this, a sailing knot?” he asks.  
  
“E was a Boy Scout,” Vince mutters, as the knot finally slips free. Vince reaches out to do the other one and Turtle hurries out of the room. He’s in the kitchen, slamming a second beer, by the time Vince – now wearing pajama pants and a T-shirt – walks in.   
  
Turtle looks over and sees Vince rubbing his wrist. “That was the bet?” he asks.  
  
He gives Turtle a sheepish shrug. “Where’s E?”  
  
“Living room,” Turtle says. “I don’t think this is a good call, man.”  
  
Vince nods. He gets a beer for himself, then walks over and stands in the doorway to the living room, leaning on the door jamb. “E?”  
  
Turtle joins Vince in the doorway. E is sitting on the couch with the phone in both hands, the call over. “What’s up, man?”  
  
E looks up and his face is blank and very white. “My mom died,” he says.  
  
Turtle feels like he’s been hit in the stomach. Next to him, Vince makes a noise just like that. “What –“  
  
“Hit by a car,” he says. “Earlier this evening.” He drops the phone onto the coffee table. “They just got through identifying her.”  
  
“E,” Vince says, stepping into the room, and E shakes his head. He stands up and walks right past them, up the stairs, and into his room. Turtle hears the door slam, and he looks over at Vince. “Jesus,” Vince says. He drains his beer in a few fast swallows, then sets the bottle on top of one of their speakers and runs up the stairs. “E,” Turtle hears him call. “E, open the door, man.”  
  
Turtle switches out his beer for a bottle of water, then picks up the phone E just set down and calls his own mother. She’s crying when she answers, and she confirms the whole story. Lois Murphy went out to do some shopping and was hit by a car that ran a red light at an intersection. “Poor Eric,” she says. “Is he all right?”  
  
Upstairs, Turtle hears E finally open the bedroom door to let Vince in. “He’s gonna be fine, Ma,” he says.  
  
They fly out to New York early the next morning. Turtle makes the arrangements even before Vince asks him to: chartered flight from Van Nuys, cars to drive them at both ends. He calls Drama and breaks the news, gets him over to the house to fix them all breakfast. For once, Vince and E sleep in E’s room all night, and Vince is the one who comes down to get them both food.  
  
“How’s he doing?” Turtle asks.  
  
Vince shrugs. He gulps his coffee and gets another. “I don’t think he slept,” he says. “I’m going back up there. Would you mind getting my suit, and uh, maybe calling Ari?”  
  
“I got it, man, no problem,” Turtle says.  
  
He calls Lloyd and asks him to make the appropriate calls to get Vince and E out of work for the next week. They’re between movies, so Lloyd says it’s no problem. Ari gets on the phone himself and says, “What can I do?” and Turtle asks him to talk to Shauna, to make sure they have a low profile leaving town and no media to deal with in New York.  
  
“Tell E chin up,” Ari says, and then, “and tell Vince no crying on camera.”  
  
E comes downstairs when the car arrives. He’s wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt and looks small and tired and pale. “E, man,” Turtle says, and he hugs him.  
  
“All right,” E says, nodding against Turtle’s shoulder. “Thanks for getting stuff together.”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
On the plane, E falls asleep before take off, and Vince says, “I put some Ambien in his coffee.”  
  
E’s head slips down onto Turtle’s shoulder, and Turtle glances at Vince. “You wanna switch me?” he asks. “It’s cool, man, look, if you two need some time -“  
  
Vince shakes his head quickly. He glances at the stewardess as she walks by. “It’s not safe,” he says, once she’s passed. Turtle nods. They’re flying toward a whole coast without safety, he realizes, and feels something twist in his chest. This is going to be the worst week of E’s life.  
  
E’s still groggy when they land in New York, so Turtle gives him a hand getting down the stairs and into the car. Inside, E drinks a bottle of water and seems to wake up, and then he looks pissed. “I meant to change on the plane,” he said, glancing down at his sweatshirt.  
  
“So change here,” Vince says, voice perfectly calm.  
  
“Not like we haven’t seen it before,” Turtle says.  
  
“Fuck you,” E says, and that makes Turtle feel better.  
  
E does change his shirt, stripping out of the hoodie and into a black button-down. Turtle glances around and realizes that Vince is wearing a black sweater and Drama has on a dark polo. He’s out of place completely in his jersey and hat, but fuck it, he decides. He’s not coming back to impress anyone.  
  
They pull up in front of Eric’s grandma’s place, which is only a couple of blocks from where they all grew up. E just stares out the window. There are cars lining the driveway and the street out front. Turtle puts his hand on E’s arm. “E, man, we’re all right behind you,” he says, and E nods, then gets out of the car. Vince follows, but he stays a step back, and Turtle and Drama bring up the rear, the driver behind them with their bags. By the time they get inside, all of the Murphy aunts are feeding on E already, and Vince has been pushed into a corner by one of the cousins, who’s crying freely on his shoulder. “Hey, easy, honey,” Drama says, putting his arm around Vince and drawing him away. “We gotta find Ma.”  
  
Turtle watches Vince watching E and feels bad for him, remembering his words from the plane: it’s not safe here. It’s not safe anywhere. The last thing E needs on a day like this is to worry about getting outed to the whole Irish Catholic clan. “You guys go,” Turtle says, “I’m gonna stick with E for a while, try and get him some breathing space.”  
  
He does his best. The aunts pass him from one over-amorous woman to another, their big pale arms squeezing him, their tears like waterfalls. After the third one says the words “orphan,” Turtle gets E a glass of whiskey, at the recommendation of his grandfather. E shoots it and then says, “Thank God for you, Turtle.”  
  
“There’s more where that came from.”  
  
“Stay close,” E says, wiping his mouth just in time to get drawn into another big hug from another grieving relative.  
  
E has seventeen aunts, eleven on his mother’s side. Seven of them are already present, and every one of them wants a word. This is worse than watching Vince go through a press line-up. The women are well-meaning but sharp. “It just broke her heart to be so far from you, these last years,” one says, just as Turtle sees Vince’s head over the top of the crowd.  
  
“Hey, there’s Vin, let’s go,” Turtle says, taking E by the shoulders and steering him toward Vince. They have to stop on the way, though, because E sees his grandmother.  
  
“Everyone will stay with me tonight,” she says. “You’re welcome to stay with us, too, Eric.”  
  
E clears his throat. “I think I’ll stay at home,” he says.  
  
“You shouldn’t be alone.”  
  
“He’s not,” Turtle says. “Don’t worry, we got him.”  
  
E shoots him a grateful look, and Turtle takes him by the arm and says, right in his ear, “Come on, let’s find your boy.”  
  
Vince and Drama and their mom are standing at the edge of the Murphy crowd. “Oh, hey, Rita,” E says.  
  
“Honey,” she says, and she pats his face with one hand. “You look terrible, Eric. What’s say we get out of here for a bit, you come over and eat something?”  
  
“Yes,” Turtle says before E has a chance. “That’s a great idea.”  
  
E glances back at his family, then nods. “As long as these guys promise not to drug my food.”  
  
“No drugs,” Rita says, taking E’s arm, “but we’ve got plenty of Chianti.”  
  
They have dinner in the Chase kitchen, a big lasagna Rita’s pulled out of the freezer that she cooks for forty-five minutes while they eat garlic bread and drink wine. Drama sits between Vince and E at the table, which looks like it’s maybe the same one as always, and Turtle sits across from them.  
  
E still looks terrible. As the evening goes on, he gets quieter and quieter, and eventually Turtle’s attempts to draw him into the conversation are met just with blank stares. Finally, around nine, he says he’s going to go home.  
  
“Eric, stay with us,” Rita says. “You can stay in Vincent’s old room. Maybe he’s a big star in California, but here I say he’s happy to bunk up.”  
  
“Yeah, E, stay,” Vince says, but E doesn’t even look at him.  
  
“Nah, I need to get home,” he says. “Lots of stuff to deal with, you know? Anyway, I appreciate it, really.”  
  
“Oh, honey, anytime.” She gets up from the table and draws him into a good, solid hug, not the overzealous kind that his aunts were spilling out. “My poor baby,” Rita says, so quiet Turtle almost doesn’t hear it, and suddenly E’s shoulders heave. Turtle looks at Drama, who looks a little frightened and embarrassed, just like Turtle, and then at Vince. Vince motions like maybe Turtle and Drama should leave, and when Vince stands up Turtle thinks that’s what he’s going to do. Instead, Vince leans in and puts his arms around his mother and E, and his mother keeps stroking E’s hair, gently, saying nonsense, soothing words. “Shh, shh.”  
  
After a few minutes like that, E pulls away, wiping his face with both hands. He waves at them, thanks Rita again in a trembling voice, and walks out of the kitchen. Rita keeps her arm around Vince, and Turtle guesses this is why he doesn’t try to follow.  
  
They sit back down at the table, and Vince keeps his head down, toying with his food. “Let’s talk about something happy,” Rita says, dabbing at her eyes. “What about you, Turtle? You got a girlfriend or two?”  
  
“Oh, I got some prospects,” Turtle says.   
  
“I wish you’d all find some nice girls,” Rita says. “You hear me, John, Vincent? Nice girls, to bring home to your mother, so I don’t have to worry that when I –“ and she stops abruptly.   
  
Vince looks stricken, and Turtle can’t think of anything to say.  
  
“Say, Ma, this is good lasagna,” Johnny says. “You make this yourself? Think I can get the recipe?”  
  
“Don’t suck up to me,” she says, but she smiles anyway and reaches over to pat his hand.  
  
Turtle waits another ten minutes, then says, “You know, I oughtta get going, too.”  
  
“You staying at your ma’s place?” Drama asks.  
  
He shrugs. “Actually, I was gonna go see how E’s doing, maybe crash there.”  
  
“What a good boy you are,” Rita says, and kisses Turtle on the side of the head. “You should all go. Don’t let that boy be all by himself.”  
  
“Yeah?” Vince looks up at Turtle, and Turtle nods. “That’s a good idea.”  
  
They troop out and right next door to E’s place, which is dark. The front door is locked, but Vince remembers where Mrs. Murphy hid the key and he lets them all in. Vince walks back toward the kitchen and E’s bedroom with Drama, and Turtle goes up the stairs. He finds E in the hallway outside his mother’s bedroom, a nearly-empty bottle of Jack in his hand. “What is this, a one-man wake?” Turtle asks, sliding down next to E. E shrugs. “You drink all of that yourself?”  
  
“Not even close,” E says. “I just got started.”  
  
“Man, you suck at being Irish.”  
  
E laughs, and that’s probably the noise that brings Vince and Drama up the stairs. Vince sits down on E’s other side, but doesn’t move closer, and neither does E. Maybe it feels wrong, Turtle thinks, for them to touch in this place, in E’s old house. He can guess to the letter what E’s dad would’ve had to say about his son having sex with a guy – about the same thing any of their dads would have said, and not stuff Turtle could easily repeat.  
  
The funny thing is, though, for once it makes Turtle more uncomfortable to watch Vince and E not touching than it would to see them together. Maybe it’s because before all of this, or at least before Turtle knew about it, Vince was the kind of guy who always had his arm around his pals, who was always scrunched up too close on the couch or the chair. And now, when E seems to really need that kind of support, the five inches of space between them seems unnatural and cold.  
  
“Share that, E,” Drama says, and picks the bottle out of his hand.  
  
They pass the bottle around, with a silent agreement that E probably doesn’t need much more. Drama tells a story about falling off the fire escape behind the Murphy place, and E remembers and laughs, “Yeah, I think my dad was ready to shoot you.”  
  
“I was more afraid of your mom, man,” Drama says. “What, she could wield a spoon better than most guys can hold a bat.”  
  
“That’s true,” Vince says, rubbing at his neck. “She caught me with Virginia Miller behind the fence once, and whacked me so hard upside the head I started getting lower grades.”  
  
E laughs. “You probably deserved it.”  
  
“Probably,” Vince agrees.  
  
Once the liquor’s gone, they all get up and go downstairs. “So I’ll see you guys tomorrow?” E says, and Vince finally puts his arm around his shoulders.  
  
“As if,” he says. “Turtle told my mom we’re having a slumber party.”  
  
“Here?”  
  
Turtle nods. “If you’re good, Drama’ll probably paint your toenails.”  
  
“Thanks,” E says. “Really, guys.”  
  
“Dibs on the couch,” Turtle calls. “You got any blankets?”  
  
“Upstairs, in Ma’s room, in the closet,” E says. “You guys can crash in there, if you want. Not like she’s using it.”  
  
Turtle shakes his head. He knows better than to accept that offer. “The couch is fine,” he says. “And Drama likes the floor.”  
  
“All right,” E says, and as he turns toward his room, Vince puts his hand on E’s back and follows him down the hall.  
  
Drama does fine on the floor, out before Turtle even has the light off. He settles in on the Murphy couch, which squeaks as he moves. Once he’s still, though, he identifies another squeak, a rhythmic squeak, coming from E’s bedsprings down the hall. Usually it would bother him, but tonight he just nods into the dark and turns over and puts a pillow over his head.

* * *

  
  
In the morning, Drama brings them egg sandwiches and coffee from the deli down the street, and after they eat he heads back to the Chase place to get showered and changed. “I should go, too, get changed,” Vince says, standing and stretching, and Turtle agrees. He hasn’t seen his mom yet, though he talked to her on the phone the night before and she understands that he needs to hang with E. “What are your plans?”  
  
E takes a deep breath. “Have to go pick out a casket,” he says.  
  
Turtle freezes. “Aw, Jesus, E,” he says.  
  
E shrugs. “Somebody’s gotta do it, huh? Better me than Aunt Emily, or Ma’ll end up in a hot-pink cardboard box.”  
  
“You want us to come with?” Vince says, leaning next to E on the counter. “Moral support?”  
  
“Yeah,” E answers, “but this isn’t California, so that’s not happening.” Vince shakes his head, and E starts to pick up the trash from the table and shuffle it into the bin. “Listen, thanks for staying, guys.”  
  
“Sure,” Turtle says, throwing out his own stuff. He bumps E’s shoulder with his own. “It’s gonna be all right, man,” he says.  
  
“Turtle’s right,” Vince says. “OK?” E shrugs. Vince leans over and kisses E on the mouth, with his hand on E’s chest, then says, “Hey, I love you.”  
  
E nods. “You’re gonna make Turtle yak his breakfast,” he says, and Vince laughs. Turtle blinks and looks away, paces into the front hall and grabs his jacket.  
  
“See you later, OK? Call when you’re done?”   
  
“Yeah, absolutely.”  
  
Turtle jogs down the steps, but Vince takes his sweet time leaving. He stops on the top step, looks back at the house, then finally walks down to meet Turtle. “He’ll be fine,” Vince says.   
  
Turtle knows he’s looking for reassurance, so he opens his mouth to agree and instead says, “You really meant that?”  
  
Vince blinks. “What?”  
  
“That love stuff,” he says.  
  
“Oh. Yeah,” he says. His eyes narrow. “You really think we’re just fucking around.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Turtle says. “I don’t know what I thought.”  
  
He walks Vince back to his mother’s place and stops when Vince turns. “He’ll be fine,” he says. “He’s gonna be fine.”  
  
Vince nods, and they bump fists before Turtle heads on to his own house. He spends the morning with his mother and his sister, meets her new boyfriend who’s a total jackass, and gets caught up on all the family gossip. When his mom asks if there’s anything exciting going on in his life, he says, “Just the usual, you know, hanging out with the guys.” And he can’t stop thinking about Vince kissing E, about Vince and E being in love.  
  
Turtle’s never been in love. Never really wanted to be. He’s seen it make idiots out of all of his friends, time and time again. That’s what’s happening here, too; Vince and E, the smartest guys he knows, have let this thing turn their lives upside down. They barely even act like the same guys anymore. The kids he grew up with on this street — he never would’ve guessed this about them. But he never would have guessed he’d be living in L.A., either, never would have seen most of his life as possible when he was a kid. So maybe it’s not so bad.  
  
Vince calls at noon and says he hasn’t heard from E. He sounds pissed and frustrated. “You wanna come over or something? Johnny’s out with some girl he used to know and Ma went shopping, and Shauna says if I leave the place I might draw paparazzi.”  
  
Turtle walks over, taking in the old neighborhood, remembering a thousand dumb adventures they had when they were young. There’s the fire escape up to Mrs. Billetti’s place, where Turtle used to get his weed and Vince used to get the occasional blow-job from her daughter, Nina. There’s the corner store where Turtle shoplifted for the first and only time in his life; he feels lucky he doesn’t have scars to remember that belting by. He got caught by the counter lady trying to smuggle out a copy of  _Hustler_. E was with him, and when the magazine dropped to the floor out of Turtle’s pantleg, he looked first surprised, then disappointed, but when the woman started yelling at them and the security guard blocked them in, E didn’t give Turtle up. Not even when his own pop came to pick him up did he admit which one of them had lifted the thing. “I’m no rat,” he muttered just before Mr. Murphy marched him outside. Turtle thinks maybe E does have some scars from that one. He wonders if Vince has seen them, if he knows what they are.  
  
Vince is sitting at the kitchen table, playing Solitaire, when Turtle walks in. “This is just sad,” he says.  
  
“This whole fucking thing is sad,” Vince says. He clears the cards from the table. “E’s picking out his mother’s casket and I’m stuck in my mother’s kitchen.”  
  
“Look, man, I know you want to help,” Turtle starts, “but E’s right. This ain’t California. People see you out there, they’re gonna talk.”  
  
“Then let them fucking talk,” he says. He runs his hands through his hair, presses them against his temples like he’s trying to hold in his anger. “My boyfriend — yeah, I’m using the term, Turtle, all right? My fucking boyfriend is having the hardest fucking week of his life, and I can’t go near him. Can’t stand too close. Can’t hold his hand. Can’t even sit by him. I mean, Saturday he’s gonna bury his mother, and I’ll be three rows back. What the fuck good is any of this?” he says, gesturing toward the walls and, Turtle guesses, toward himself.  
  
“Vin,” Turtle says, taking a seat at the table. He doesn’t like the wild look in Vince’s eyes. Usually, it takes E to talk him down from a mood like this. “Man, I get that, I do,” Turtle says, keeping his voice as calm as possible.  
  
“I should be there with him,” Vince says.  
  
“Yeah,” Turtle agrees. “But if you go now, all that shit you’re afraid of, that’s gonna happen. You think that’ll make E’s week any easier?”  
  
“I hate this,” Vince says, but his voice has dropped to a whisper.   
  
Turtle just nods. He’s afraid, for a moment, that Vince might cry or something. He finds two beers in Rita’s fridge and puts one in front of Vince, then takes the cards and deals Blackjack. They’re still playing when Rita gets home.  
  
“How about a stew, tonight?” she says, slinging two full grocery bags onto the counter. “All of you boys come over, you get Eric over here, we’ll have stew.”  
  
Vince shrugs. “He might not want company tonight, Ma,” he says.  
  
“Don’t take no for an answer,” she says. “The last thing that boy needs is to be alone right now. There’s plenty enough time for that later.” She pauses, with a can of cream of tomato soup in one hand. “What happened to that Jill girl he was seeing? Lois really liked her, I think, or liked what she’d heard.”  
  
Turtle clears his throat. “They broke up last year,” he says.  
  
Rita groans. “Is it just that state? Is that what it is? My boys, they have all these nice girls around all the time at home, I send them to California and no one can settle down. Not even Eric, who cried when Mrs. Derwitz got a divorce in third grade.”  
  
Turtle fights a snicker at that. Mrs. Derwitz was his third grade teacher, too, though looking back he has a pretty good idea of why that divorce happened: the other third grade teacher, Mr. Lloni.  
  
“Ma, we’re settled,” Vince says. “Just because we aren’t married doesn’t mean we aren’t settled.”  
  
“I mean with a family, Vince,” she says, raising her voice to be heard over the rush of the sink. She starts scraping carrots with a vegetable peeler. “At your age, I was married to your father and already had Johnny.”  
  
“So pick on Johnny, not me,” Vince says. He sits back in his chair, his arms crossed, his expression sullen. Turtle feels like he’s back in high school, watching Vince fight with his mother over curfew or grades or something. It’s the same awkward feeling, because he wants to take Vince’s side, but he doesn’t want to get Rita mad at him or be accused of disrespecting her. So he stays quiet, picking up their game and shuffling the cards. He lays out solitaire for himself.  
  
“I’m not picking on anyone,” Rita says. “I’m just saying, do you know what a comfort it would have been, to Lois, if she’d known Eric was settled with a girl, that he had someone there to take care of him? Can you understand what a comfort that would be for a mother, Vincent?”  
  
“Eric has someone to take care of him,” Vince says, and the dangerous edge is back in his voice.  
  
Turtle clears his throat, tries to catch Vince’s eyes. “Yeah, we do all right,” he says.  
  
“We’re talking about two different kinds of things,” Rita says, turning around, the peeler still in one hand. “You’re talking about getting him drunk after the funeral. I’m talking about someone to come home to, Vincent. I’m talking about a girl to hold his hand at the burial. I’m talking about love, marriage, all that stuff.”  
  
“So am I,” Vince says. He puts his hands flat on the table and leans forward. “Eric has that, Ma, and so do I.”  
  
It’s a movie star moment, or it should be — Vince is tense, his face is drawn and sharp, his eyes flash, all of it. What ruins it is the wet sound of a carrot dropping to the floor, and then the sharp crack of Rita’s voice. “You mean you two — you and Eric —  _you_  and  _Eric_?”  
  
“Yeah,” Vince says. “We’re together.” His voice is soft, now, falsely defiant. All the air seems to have rushed out of his big confident persona.  
  
“You’re gay, that’s what you’re telling me?”  
  
“Close enough,” Vince says.  
  
Turtle picks up his cards, fast, back into the deck, wondering if they’ll have to make a quick escape. Rita turns back to the sink. She picks up a potato and begins peeling aggressively.  
  
“Ma,” Vince says. He looks at Turtle, and Turtle shrugs, spreads his hands, not sure what to do. Vince looks just as lost, but he stands up and walks toward the counter. “Ma, talk to me,” he says, putting a hand on her shoulder.  
  
Rita flings the potato into a bowl so hard the bowl skids down the counter. She grabs another potato and attacks. “There’s nothing to talk about,” she says.  
  
“Come on,” Vince says. “Don’t be angry. Ma.”  
  
“Vincent,” she says, and she turns, holding up the potato like a knife, “I don’t want to hear about this. I don’t ever want to hear anything more about this from you.”  
  
Vince’s eyes go wide. When his mother turns back to her peeling, he stands there, one hand on the counter, and Turtle can barely look at him. He’s embarrassed to be there, embarrassed and hurt for Vince, a little angry at his mother, and mostly just sad. How else did he think it would go? Turtle wonders, but he knows he can’t say that out loud.  
  
“Ma?” Vince says, and his voice is so quiet and desperate that Turtle finally looks away. After a moment, he hears Vince say, quietly, “All right, I’m gonna go, then.” He watches Vince’s feet move on the tile and gets up, too. Rita keeps peeling her potatoes, and Turtle can hear the rasp of the peeler even as they walk out the front door.   
  
On the front stoop, Turtle puts his hand on Vince’s arm and squeezes, and Vince nods, like a thank you. “Let’s go,” Turtle says.  
  
The night has turned cooler, and Turtle’s glad it’s only a few yards to E’s doorstep. Vince says nothing, just jogs the distance and runs the stairs, puts both hands on the doorknob and turns. The door opens and he walks in, and Turtle catches up to him in the doorway leading to the living room.  
  
E’s asleep on the couch, a beer resting on the coffee table, a stack of paperwork laid out in front of him, the television bubbling with local news. Vince is watching him, and Turtle stares too, tries to see what Vince is seeing, but all he’s got is E, E like always, hassled and tired and on top of things. “Listen, you want me to split?” he asks.  
  
Vince shakes his head. “Nah. But - maybe don’t say anything.”  
  
“Won’t hear it from me,” Turtle says. Vince nods, then walks into the living room. He sits on the arm of the couch and puts a hand on E’s ankle and says his name. E wakes up fast, startled.  
  
“Oh, hey,” he says, glancing between them both. “What time is it?”  
  
“Six. You forgot to call,” Turtle says. He’s angry — suddenly, he’s furious. If E had just called, like he’d promised, then that whole scene could’ve been skipped. Vince would’ve been over here earlier, or E would’ve come by the Chase place and held Vince back.  
  
“Sorry,” E says. “I tried earlier but my service was bad, and then — I don’t know, I just -” E blinks, and Turtle remembers exactly where E’s been. His anger vanishes as fast as it came.  
  
“It’s fine,” Vince says. His voice is deceptively calm. “How was it?”  
  
“Fine.” E sits up. “No, really, it was fine. I mean, better than the last time, with Pop. At least I could afford something.”  
  
“Do you need -”  
  
“Nah, I got it,” E says. “I don’t wanna talk about my day. What’ve you guys been doing?”  
  
Turtle freezes and looks at Vince. Vince shrugs, perfect big screen casual, then slips off the arm and onto the couch, almost tackling E, pushing him back down and resting his head on E’s shoulder. “I’m so fucking glad to see you.”  
  
E laughs and tousles Vince’s hair. “It’s better than having a dog,” he says.  
  
“Ruff,” Vince says, and Turtle shakes his head.  
  
“What is this, bestiality now?” he asks. “You guys know I love you, but you get into animals and we’re through.”  
  
Vince growls and barks, and Turtle can’t help it, he laughs. “I need a drink,” he says, and E says, “Check the fridge.”  
  
He gets a beer — the six pack is still in the plastic market bag, probably something E picked up on the way home — and then goes back in and sits in the armchair. E still has one hand in Vince’s hair, but he’s stroking, now, and Vince is settled in beside him, head turned toward the TV. Everything’s calm and domestic and easy. Turtle picks up the remote and flips through the channels. E’s mom has cable, now, and Turtle guesses that’s a gift, particularly when he climbs into the premium channels.  
  
“Stop,” Vince says, so Turtle does, on ESPN classic. They watch reruns of American Gladiator, stuff they all watched and imitated as kids. Turtle can picture this, suddenly, this kind of settled life for Vince and E: together on the couch, watching ESPN, drinking a beer, just relaxed and comfortable. He wishes Rita could see this and understand it, that Vince really has found someone to come home to.  
  
Drama comes in during the second half. He looks down at the couch, staring at Vince, and Turtle can tell he’s been home, he’s seen his mother. Turtle sits up. “Drama, good,” he says. “I need a smoke, you down?” He gets up even as he’s saying it, so that to turn him down, Drama will have to make a big scene. For once, Drama reads the situation, it seems, because he just shrugs and holds the door open.  
  
“You can smoke in here,” E says. And of course — it’s not like his mom will care, anymore.  
  
“Might run to Meyer’s,” Turtle says quickly. “You want anything?”  
  
“Get some food if you want,” E says, and Turtle nods. Outside, he takes a deep breath of heavy city air and his stomach rumbles. They skipped out on Rita’s stew, and he’s starving.  
  
It’s a little strange to be walking these streets with Drama; when Turtle was a kid, Drama was already a teenager, with no time for little kids; by the time Turtle hit high school, Drama was on the coast. In L.A., it’s hard to remember that Drama used to be kind of a hero figure to him, a kid who got away and came back with stories, with these stories, man. Here, Drama standing in the street, looking back at Turtle like  _what the fuck_ , Turtle remembers. He clears his throat and walks out to join him, and they start up the street.  
  
“Vince told your mom,” Turtle says.   
  
Drama winces. “That explains the stew,” he says, and when Turtle looks over, he shrugs. “Burnt to a fucking crisp, man.”  
  
Turtle nods. He really does wish for a cigarette, at the moment, or better yet, a joint. There’s probably something in his jacket, but that’s back at his mother’s place, and he doesn’t want to go there. Chances are, if Rita’s decided to call anyone, it’s Turtle’s mom; and even if she hasn’t called, he can’t really deal with her right now, her and her sixth sense for trouble.  
  
“Vince OK?” Drama asks, and Turtle feels a strange swell of pride in him, for picking the right side.  
  
“I dunno,” Turtle says. “E doesn’t know yet, so don’t say anything.”  
  
Drama shakes his head. “Not a conversation I’d like to have at all.”  
  
“Yeah.” Turtle takes a slow breath. “You might, uh, you think you might talk to your mom?”  
  
“She’ll come around,” he says, and Turtle nods.  
  
“That’s not actually what I meant,” he says. “She, uh, she needs to know she can’t, like, say anything. To anyone.”  
  
Drama pauses in the middle of the street. He scuffs his shoe along the asphalt. “Tell me what happened,” he says, and so Turtle does. “All right,” he says when Turtle’s finished describing the scene. “I’ll talk to her.”  
  
And just like that, he turns and walks back to his house, leaving Turtle alone in the middle of the street. “I didn’t mean right this minute,” he calls, but Drama just waves and keeps walking. Turtle rolls his eyes, then shakes it off and heads for Meyer’s corner convenience store anyway. He gives the old Galaga video game a tap as he passes it by, then picks his way down the outside aisle, looking for food. Nothing really sounds good — and most of it requires some work — so in the end he just gets a half-dozen frozen burritos, some chips and a jar of ranch dip, and two more six packs. When the guy at the counter cards him, Turtle pulls out a legit license for the first time ever. The guy looks him over, a neighborhood look, trying to see if he fits in, but he isn’t familiar to Turtle at all. Probably somebody’s cousin or somebody’s boyfriend.  
  
“California,” the guy says, a little disgusted.  
  
“You have a fuckin’ great night, there, pal,” Turtle mutters, and sweeps his bags off the counter.  
  
Back at the house, E gets up to help Turtle find plates in the kitchen. “What happened to Drama?”  
  
Turtle shrugs. “Who knows, that guy,” he says, and E gives him a funny look but lets it go, working on the cheap burritos. His mother’s microwave is an older model without an automatic turn table; E pops the door open a few times to spin the plate a quarter turn like it’s still habit.  
  
“Couldn’t buy her a new one,” he says, shaking his head. “Told me to save my money. I don’t think she ever really got what it’s like, out there.”  
  
“My ma, too,” Turtle says, watching the burrito spin around on E’s mother’s green-rimmed plates. “You know what she says when I talk to her on the phone? ‘Don’t forget to lock your doors.’ I tell her, Ma, we got gates, but she doesn’t understand.”  
  
E shakes his head. “It really is a whole other world.”  
  
“You miss it?” Turtle asks.  
  
“Yeah, right now,” E says, and Turtle feels dumb, and then he’s not sure whether E misses California or New York. He looks around the small kitchen, remembers Vince’s mother’s sharp words, and knows which world he likes better, no question.  
  
They have a pretty subdued dinner of soggy burritos and salty chips, and Vince takes E back to bed before the evening news is even finished. Turtle can’t blame either of them for turning in early; they’re having, separately, some of the worst days of their lives.  
  
Vince is making coffee in the kitchen when Turtle gets up; he thinks it’s maybe the sound of Vince trying to be quiet that wakes him. “No Drama?” Turtle asks.  
  
“No,” Vince says shortly. “Where the fuck is the coffee?”  
  
Turtle opens the freezer and pulls out a tupperware container of ground Folgers. “It’s where my ma keeps it, too,” he says. “Stays fresh longer, she says.”  
  
Vince nods and dumps a couple heaps into the coffee filter. He looks nervous enough that Turtle’s surprised he’s not biting his nails or something. “What’s the plan today?”  
  
“Wake,” Vince says. “All evening.”  
  
Turtle nods, then flips on the coffeemaker, a step Vince has forgotten. “And before that, you and I are gonna do some serious smoking,” Turtle says. “Or you’re gonna chew someone’s leg off.”  
  
Vince laughs, a little mirthless noise, but nods.   
  
“It’s cool, man,” Turtle says. “Everything’s gonna be fine, all right? Don’t worry.”  
  
“Worry about what?” E asks. He walks in wearing a sharp white shirt and black slacks, the knot in his charcoal tie already smart and secure. Turtle’s first thought is, Jesus, he looks like a grown up, and then he looks over and sees a flash of wonder and surprise on Vince’s face.  
  
“You’re all dressed up,” he says.  
  
“Very observant,” E says. “I gotta meet with Father Brian this morning.” Turtle groans and hears Vince do the same thing. Father Brian was the parish priest even when they were kids, and he was a hundred years old then and already cranky. No telling what the guy is like, now.  
  
“I’ll come with you,” Vince says.  
  
“No way in hell,” Turtle says, and is surprised to realize that E said the same thing at the same time. E shakes his head. “So that’s unanimous,” he says.  
  
“Jesus, I’m not gonna grope you in church,” Vince says.  
  
“And while I’m sure Jesus would appreciate that, even on your best behavior, you’re not going,” E says. “No way. This is gonna be a suckfest the way it is, no way am I gonna worry about cameras.”  
  
“Besides,” Turtle says, “you and I have a date with a bong.”  
  
“Oh, huh-uh,” E says. “No way. I’m sorry, but you are not coming to my mother’s wake fucked up. Swear to me.”  
  
“Hey,” Turtle says, “come on, the guy’s wound tight -”  
  
“Pot makes him horny,” E says, and Turtle blinks. He looks at Vince, who shrugs.  
  
“Sometimes,” he admits.  
  
“Swear to me,” E says, and Vince nods.  
  
“All right, all right,” he says. “But, come on, there’s got to be some way I can help. I can’t just sit here all day.”  
  
“Also true,” E says. “Go home before your mother gets ideas.”  
  
Turtle clears his throat. “Or come hang with me,” he says. “My ma wants to see you all.”  
  
Vince shrugs. “All right,” he says, after a moment.  
  
“No fucking pot!” E calls, walking back toward the bedroom, and Vince rolls his eyes.  
  
“Like he’s my mother,” Vince says. But that afternoon, in Turtle’s basement, they leave his old bong in its ritual storage place, tucked neatly under his bed in an old Nike shoebox. Turtle almost wants to get it out just for old time’s sake, but instead he finds his Nintendo — original fucking NES — and they play Super Mario Bros., pausing between levels to trade off because only one of the controllers works.  
  
Around six, Turtle’s mother comes downstairs and says, “You want to be late for your friend’s thing, is that it?” and so Turtle goes up to his room and puts on his suit. When he comes down, Vince is talking to his sister at the table, and his smile is recognizably fake. “Honey, are you riding with us?” Turtle’s mom asks, laying a hand on Vince’s shoulder. It’s funny, Vince has always been so good with other people’s parents.  
  
“I’ll catch a ride with my brother,” Vince says, standing up. “But thank you. It was good seeing you guys, thanks for letting me hang out here today.”  
  
“Vin,” Turtle says, and Vince shrugs. “You, uh, you sure, you got a ride from Drama?”  
  
He nods. “See you there,” he says.  
  
And so that’s how it works. Turtle and his sister, in a navy dress that’s maybe a few years old, and his mother in a church dress, they ride together over to the mortuary. It’s the same place, Finnigan and Son, that Turtle went to in high school, when it was E’s dad in the casket. Just walking in the door, he feels a wave of sadness, almost like a physical thing. He holds his sister’s arm until she says, “Jesus, what?” and then he lets go and takes his mother’s arm instead. She pats his hand. He remembers the months after that, how E pulled out of their L.A. plans immediately so he could stay home with his mother. Turtle always thought of that as sad, as a little pathetic; out in L.A., sleeping on Drama’s couch, he thought E must be miserable and he thought it was a bad call. Now he looks at the end of the aisle and sees E shaking hands with an old man in a gray suit, E nodding, solemn and grown-up, and he thinks about E living in that house with just his mother, the two of them making conversation over dinner, and he feels something like he did when the Yankees finished last in ‘90, only ten times worse. “Jesus,” he whispers, and for once his mother doesn’t nag him about his language. She just squeezes his hand.  
  
“I’m gonna get some air, quick,” he says, and she nods.  
  
He walks out the front door and around the side of the building, to the exit where the limousine is parked in the carport. He leans against the cement blocks, which have flowers patterned into their insides. His own dad is still around, somewhere, living in Brooklyn Heights with some woman he’s never met. They don’t talk so much anymore, not a particularly ugly silence, just silence. Turtle doesn’t know the guy except for the crap he pulled on Turtle’s mom when he was a kid, and though he hasn’t really forgiven that he doesn’t care as much anymore. Mostly because he’s an adult now, and nothing the guy does can hurt him now. Turtle’s mother takes care of herself, always has, won’t hear about him trying to intervene. That’s how it’s been his whole life: you are the kids, we are the parents, here’s how it works. You do your fucking chores and then you watch the television.  
  
But it’s not like that for his friends, it never has been. E was always close with his parents. His dad was never a well guy, had some kind of accident that kept him from working much while they were in high school, and so his mom worked a lot. But they were always good people, solid, the Murphys, older than the other parents on the block but real nice. Kind. E’s mother baked cookies sometimes on the weekends and always made too much food when they came over.  
  
Vince’s mom was the hot, crazy one, the one who showed up for grade school parties with a bag of Fritos and cans of store-brand cola, in a top that made the teachers cluck. Their house was always full of people, her sisters, her boyfriends, for a while the stepkids that came with her rocky marriage. They had a house full of noise and shouting and passion; two out of three times, if there was yelling on the block it was coming out of the Chase house. Maybe it wasn’t such a surprise that someone from a place like that gravitated toward someone like E, who’d been sturdy and stable his whole life.  
  
He hears feet crunching on the drive and looks up. Drama walks up, his hands in his pockets, his tie askew over a black shirt. “What’s up, man?” he asks.  
  
Turtle shakes his head. “Poor fucking bastard,” he says, tilting his head back toward the building.  
  
“E? Yeah,” Drama says. He leans next to Turtle. “He’ll be all right, though,” he says.  
  
“You think?”  
  
“Sure,” Drama says. “He’s got us. And, you know,” he says, and Turtle nods.  
  
“Vince ride over with you?”  
  
“Nah,” he says, and Turtle looks over, surprised. “He caught a ride with one of E’s aunts,” he says. “I had to wait on Ma.”  
  
Turtle narrows his eyes. “You aren’t taking sides, are you, Drama?”  
  
“Course I am,” Drama says. “Vince is my baby brother. Ma’ll get over it.”  
  
Turtle doesn’t feel confident of that at all, but he nods. He wants a smoke, but his mother would smell it on him, and he promised E no pot. So he just takes a couple deep breaths of the sweaty neighborhood air. “We do all right, huh?” Turtle says, staring at the limo. He can remember when this was the only limo he’d ever seen.  
  
“We do fine,” Drama says, dropping an arm around his shoulders. “Now, come on, let’s go back inside. These Irish, they throw a mean wake.”  
  
In reality, the wake isn’t so interesting as all that. There’s the religious part, first, where the priest says the rosary a hundred times and they all murmur along. Turtle’s almost surprised that he remembers the words, but they spill out just as easy, just as mindlessly, as they did when he was a kid. Then there’s more viewing, more of E standing up at the front looking damned uncomfortable, more old people shuffling past. Turtle goes through the line because it’s expected, but he only glances briefly at Mrs. Murphy’s waxy face.  
  
Vince sits by Drama, their mother on Drama’s other side. They all look miserable, and Turtle thinks it’s lucky they’re at a funeral, otherwise it’d be pretty obvious something’s wrong.  
  
After the second pass at the casket the mortuary staff moves the chairs around a little and the bar in the corner opens up and people start making toasts and speeches. The aunts all have a say, and E sits in the front row with some of his cousins and toasts his mother and mostly Turtle thinks he looks like a robot, an Armani-clad robot. Maybe Turtle’s mother notices this, too, because when Eric’s cousin gets up she nudges him. “Go sit with your friend,” she says, and Turtle does as he’s told.  
  
“How you holding up?” Turtle asks. It’s one of those stupid questions that he always heard adults throwing around when he was a kid; now it makes sense to him.  
  
E shrugs. His glass is empty but there’s a bottle at his feet. “When will this fucking be over, huh?”  
  
Turtle nods and watches E refill his glass. More people speak; more people toast. He leans forward a little as Eric’s Uncle Pal talks about Lois when she was a kid, how Pal and his brother used to “scare the living shit” out of her when she came home from school, locking her out of the house, dropping her dolls from the balconies. “All of that stupid kid shit,” he says. He still has a vague brogue. “And Jesus, but she took it well. That was Lois, she just took everything in stride. No-fucking-nonsense, my sis,” he says. “And now she’s with her James. I know she wasn’t ready to go, I know she would’ve liked to see young Eric grow a little older, but I think she can be happy. She raised a fine young man. She can be at peace.” He raises his glass. “To Lois!”  
  
Turtle raises his, too, and hears E’s voice crack next to him. When he turns, E drains his drink. He gets to his feet, and as always, looks steady. At the podium, he pauses, then says, “It means a lot. Everyone being here, it means a lot. It would have meant a lot to my ma, too. I can — it’s funny, I can hear her voice in my head, sometimes, I guess that’s part of growing up, but I can hear her saying, you know, ‘Just don’t go to any trouble.’ She liked to say that.” Turtle glances around. People are nodding. “I think she’d be pretty flattered, pretty awed, by the trouble you’ve all gone through to be here, to remember her. I think she’d be pretty happy.”  
  
He pauses, then puts one hand on the casket. “She was a wonderful mother, for a boy,” he says. “She had mostly sisters, growing up, and so all she knew about boys was that we liked to eat. I had the biggest lunches of everyone at school. It’s how I made most of the friends I have today, in fact.” Turtle catches his eye and lifts his glass, and he watches E glance back to where Vince is. “She’s with my dad, now,” E says, almost too quietly for the microphone to pick it up. “When he died, she told me, ‘Wherever he is, he’s happier, now, except you know he misses us like crazy.’ And so I’ve gotta believe, she’s right there with him, and she’s happy save for that.” He clears his throat. “I sure miss her already,” he says, and his voice cracks just a little. He raises his glass. “To my ma,” he says.  
  
The crowd echoes the call, and glasses are raised and drained, and there’s a general scraping of chairs and hailing good-bye. Turtle stands up and feels the whiskey hit him, is surprised by the unsteadiness of his legs. He manages a few steps forward, to where E’s still standing at the podium, hand still on the casket. His uncle Pal is talking to him, and he has one heavy hand on E’s shoulder. Turtle doesn’t want to interrupt, so he stands to the side, just a little, and after a moment Vince joins him. They’re both staring at E.   
  
“You drunk?” Vince asks, and Turtle nods.  
  
“You?”  
  
“Nah,” he says. “My mom’s a real buzzkill.”  
  
Turtle almost snickers, because it’s so much like the old days, but Vince hasn’t turned away from watching E at all. “How drunk is he?”  
  
“Probably a lot,” Turtle says. He figures he was matching E drink for drink, and Turtle has a higher tolerance. Vince nods, then eases up to the podium and next to E. Turtle can’t hear exactly what he says, but suddenly Pal hugs E and then says, “You boys take care,” and he walks away. Vince takes E by the arm, and Turtle realizes E is, really,  _very_  drunk from the way that he doesn’t fight it at all.  
  
“That was nice,” E says, walking between them out the side exit. Drama’s waiting there, as though the escape was planned, and maybe it was. Turtle can’t tell.  
  
“Jesus fuck, E,” Turtle says, putting an arm around him. There are a few relatives milling by the front doors and they all raise a glass as they walk by, or call out something kind to E. No one seems to think it’s at all weird for them to be heading out together, a pack like always.  
  
They catch a cab back to E’s house. When they get there, he unlocks the door and then goes upstairs without a word. Turtle starts to follow, but Vince taps his shoulder. “Leave him,” he says. “He needs a minute.”  
  
Turtle hears the shower turn on, and then he follows the other guys into the kitchen. Vince sits at the kitchen table and Drama inspects the fridge. Turtle takes off his suit jacket and his tie, sits across from Vince, and says, “Now can we smoke up?” and Vince says, “Fuck, yeah.”   
  
While Turtle checks his pockets for a joint, Vince deals blackjack using cards from a drawer by the phone. Drama likes whatever he finds and starts mixing things in bowls. Turtle sits back down and proceeds to lose hand after hand. Soon, something’s frying on the stovetop and the kitchen fills up, slowly, with cooking smoke and the smell of herb.  
  
When E comes back down, hair wet, feet bare, he sits next to Vince. “You want in?” Turtle asks, and E shakes his head and instead takes the joint. He inhales and holds so long that Turtle’s momentarily afraid he’s dead, which is the pot talking on his end. E exhales and hands the joint back, then rests his head on Vince’s shoulder and slides one hand across his chest, a few fingers slipping between the buttons of his shirt. It is one of the only times that Turtle can remember where E is the one seeking contact, and it makes him so suddenly and viciously sad that he almost has to get up from the table. Instead, he concentrates on his hand, the numbers blurring and then solidifying and then blurring again, and when he’s got them back in focus it’s still a shitty hand.  
  
He looks across the table, and sees that E has his eyes closed, and Vince has an arm around him, just sort of petting his biceps. “We can go to bed,” Vince whispers, and E makes a non-committal noise and turns and kisses Vince’s neck and stays settled close.  
  
“Pancakes,” Drama says, very suddenly, and Turtle almost forgot he was in the room. He drops a stack of pancakes on a plate into the middle of the table, then hands around more plates and forks and syrup cold from the fridge. Vince has to eat with his left hand, because E doesn’t move, just picks with his fingers from Vince’s plate.  
  
When half the pancake is gone, E groans and lays his head on the table. “E?” Vince asks.  
  
“Mm-hm,” E says.  
  
Vince rubs his back in long strokes, up-down, up-down. No one talks. There’s nothing to say. Turtle eats and doesn’t think about why they’re there. It’s not hard; his head is spinning.  
  
When the pancakes are gone, E sits up, slowly, and says, “OK, take me to bed.”  
  
Vince nods, and pulls E up from his seat and says a quiet good-night to them.  
  
Drama picks up the joint and lights it again, and he finishes it in silence. “Tomorrow’s gonna fucking blow,” he says, and Turtle nods. It’s all he can think to do.

* * *

  
  
The funeral is high Catholic mass, so it both takes forever and feels like it takes forever. E sits on the front row, all the way at the end, and there’s a gap of about a foot between him and his aunt Emily. He looks absolutely alone, and Turtle looks over at his own sister and his mother, and his stomach feels sore. The Chases — Drama in the middle — are sitting in the next row up from Turtle, four rows back from E, and that feels like a huge distance. E’s cousins, all of them with the famous red Murphy hair, are the pallbearers, and E follows the casket out with his grandmother on his arm. It’s the same scene at the burial site, only with a few less people around. E stands apart from his family just a little, and Turtle’s surprised by how Hollywood he really does look: his suit is smooth, tailored Armani black, and he wears sunglasses and keeps his hands folded. There’s no emotion like at the wake; E just looks pale and sad and a little hungover. He stays at the gravesite until everyone else has walked away, until it’s just Turtle and Vince and Drama leaning against the limo.  
  
When E walks up, he has his hands in his pockets. “Let’s go home,” he says.  
  
“Thank God,” Vince says, and it takes Turtle just a second to realize they mean L.A.


	11. NOVEMBER: Hide in Plain Sight

Vince catches Turtle in the kitchen on a Tuesday morning. “I wanna ask your help with something,” he says. “But if it’s gonna make you uncomfortable, then don’t worry about it.”  
  
“I’m not about to get a threesome offer, am I?” Turtle asks.  
  
“Funny,” Vince says. “No. Uh, there’s — I wanna get something, for E.”  
  
“Please, God, if the next sentence involves the word ‘sex toy,’” Turtle starts, and Vince rolls his eyes.  
  
“He’s got enough of those,” Vince says, and Turtle can’t tell if he’s being serious or just trying to get a rise. “I want to get him something special. To cheer him up, kind of, and -” he shrugs, and Turtle doesn’t need to hear much more. E’s been pretty down since they got back from New York, and this week’s been particularly rough, trying to arrange to get his mother’s house packed up from across the country. “It’s been a rough couple of months, you know? And I didn’t really do anything big for our anniversary.”  
  
“Anniversary?”  
  
“Last month,” Vince says. “It’s been a year since he broke it off with Gillian.”  
  
Turtle nods. “Congratulations, man,” he says, and Vince nods. “Seriously, a year, that’s a pretty big deal for you.”  
  
Vince smirks. “Thanks,” he says. “I am capable of commitment, you know.”  
  
“I’m learning,” Turtle says. “So what do you need my help with?”  
  
The smirk broadens into a grin. “You wanna go shopping?”  
  
They go to Beverly Hills. “What are you thinking?” Turtle asks, driving down Wilshire. “He’s got a car, and I’m gonna guess you aren’t in the market for another house.”  
  
Vince shrugs. “I’m thinking maybe, I don’t know. Let’s go to Cartier.”  
  
“He’s got a watch,” Turtle says. “Cufflinks or something?”  
  
“We’ll just look,” Vince says.  
  
Inside, they look at watches, all of them sparkling and coated in diamonds, none of them at all E’s style. “I think he really likes his watch,” Turtle says, and Vince agrees. Turtle starts for the cufflink display, but Vince doesn’t follow. Instead, he shifts over a case. It takes Turtle a moment to follow him, and when he does he freezes. Vince is looking at rings. “Seriously?” Turtle asks.  
  
“He’s got a watch,” Vince says, and Turtle shakes his head. He’s aware, suddenly, of the salesgirl lurking at the end of the counter.  
  
“Vince,” Turtle whispers, “you can’t do this.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
Turtle recognizes the recklessness in Vince’s voice and knows he’s not going to win this one. Since they got back from home, while E’s been pulling a bit of a hermit act, Vince has been hovering close to E all the time, almost daring people to say something, as if showing up stuck to E’s side in  _US Weekly_  will convince Vince’s mother that she should start speaking to him again. Since E’s been distracted, there’s been no one to tell Vince he should maybe take a step back.  
  
He can understand, a little, why a ring would seem like a good idea, but they’re in a store with security cameras and gawkers and outside there’s probably paparazzi. The best Turtle can hope for at this point is damage control, but he keeps trying. “This is a bad idea,” he says. “What about a suit? He likes Armani.”  
  
The salesgirl walks up, smiles, and says, “Hello, Vince,” with a warm little purr.   
  
“Hey, Monica,” Vince says. “How’ve you been?”  
  
“I’ve been well,” she says, her smile sleek and a little suggestive. Oh, great, Turtle thinks, of course he knows her. Of fucking course.  
  
“You’re looking for a ring?” she asks.  
  
“Yeah,” Vince says. His fingers — ringless — tap over the glass.  
  
“We have some lovely new diamonds,” she says, starting to the women’s side of the case. “Have you seen the Panthére collection? What does she like?”  
  
“It’s for a guy,” Vince says, and Turtle stifles a groan. He watches the salesgirl’s eyes flicker, in surprise or confusion. “Could we see that one?” Vince points straight down at a silver band.   
  
She nods and pulls out a tray, sets the ring on the surface. “White gold,” she says. “Part of the Love collection.”  
  
Even Turtle knows enough about jewelry to see that’s obvious; it has bold circles around the band with lines through their centers, like little screws, the Cartier Love trademark. A circular diamond sparkles in the middle. “Is it for you?” she asks.  
  
“It’s a gift,” Vince says.  
  
Turtle can see her making connections in her head, and he pipes up without thinking. “It’s for me,” Turtle says, as fast as he can manage, and both the salesgirl and Vince look up at him in surprise. “I mean. Not that Vince is buying me a ring, because  _Vince wouldn’t buy another guy a ring._ ” He steps on Vince’s foot as he says this, and Vince flinches.  
  
“So who is it for, then?”  
  
Vince is staring at him, a tiny smirk starting on his face. Turtle can feel his cheeks turning red. “It’s for my, uh, my, uh,” he takes a deep breath, speaks as quietly as he can, “my boy. My boyfriend.”  
  
“Really,” Monica says, and her smile is instantly sweet. Turtle rubs his forehead and pulls his cap down. “That’s really charming. You’ve been together a while?”  
  
“A little more than a year,” Vince answers for him, grinning across the counter.   
  
“Ah, then it’s certainly time for something like this,” she says.  
  
Vince is clearly enjoying this, Turtle can see. “See, I told you it was a good idea.”  
  
Turtle shakes his head. There are only a few other people in the store; he hopes none of them are looking at him. He wishes the salesgirl wasn’t looking at him. “I just don’t know,” he says, picking the ring up. “It’s a big fucking step.”  
  
Vince shrugs. “What, you don’t think he’ll like it?”  
  
He understands this is an honest question. He looks at the ring and thinks about E, about how for the last month he’s been walking around like a zombie. Two nights ago, Drama mentioned maybe going back East for Christmas and E said he’d be sticking around in L.A. “Not much left back there for me,” he said.   
  
Turtle turns the ring around, looks over at Vince. “Yeah, he’ll probably like it,” he admits, and Vince grins.  
  
Monica smiles, her delicate hands on the top of the counter. “So you’ll take it?” Vince asks, turning to Turtle, and Turtle sighs.  
  
“You know, we’ve sold several of these to gay couples, recently,” she says. “The bracelet is also very popular -”  
  
“No bracelet,” Vince and Turtle say together, and Monica laughs.  
  
“Well, the ring is a very good choice,” she says. “If you want to say you’re serious.”  
  
Turtle clears his throat. “Yeah, oh, I do,” he says, glaring at Vince, who has a vaguely pleading expression on his face. “Believe me, I am completely whipped. Almost obsessed.” Vince mouths something, maybe “please.” “All right, wrap it up,” he says, and Vince’s smile grows huge.  
  
“What size?” she asks.  
  
Turtle blinks, and Vince says smoothly, “A nine. Jesus, I knew you’d forget.” He elbows Turtle, and Turtle forces a laugh.  
  
“He’s nervous,” Monica says, patting Turtle’s wrist. “Really, it’s endearing.”  
  
“It really is,” Vince says. He pulls out a credit card. “On me,” he says, handing it to Monica. “Happy anniversary, man.”  
  
Turtle rolls his eyes. “Yeah, thanks,” he says.  
  
Monica runs the card and packages the gift, making sweet, flirtatious small talk with Vince. She’s even a flirty with Turtle, asking him what else he has planned for his anniversary. “Long walk on the beach,” Turtle says, and she smiles.  
  
“Turtle’s a real romantic,” Vince says. “You ought to see them together. Very cute.”  
  
“Yeah?” Monica says.   
  
“Yeah, we’re disgusting,” Turtle mutters. “Some people say it turns their stomach.”  
  
“Well, you can’t listen to them,” she says. “Maybe we could double some time.” She smiles across at Vince and Turtle watches him blink.   
  
Ha, he thinks.  
  
“Oh, they’re pretty shy,” Vince says. “They don’t get out much.”  
  
“That’s terrible,” she says, handing Turtle the small red ring box. “You should be proud. You shouldn’t have to hide.”  
  
“You’re so right,” Vince says, grinning. “Really. Turtle, she’s got a point.”  
  
Turtle’s sweating. He’s not even sure what to say.   
  
“We could go tonight,” Monica suggests, and Turtle watches Vince’s eyes get just a little wider. “I know the sommelier at Café Calais, and I remember how you like a good wine.” She leans across the counter. “Not a bad place to start your anniversary celebrations…” She touches Vince’s arm, and Turtle watches him trying not to react. Vince is looking at him, and Turtle’s looking back, not sure what exactly Vince is trying to say. When he glances over, Monica’s giving them both kind of a funny look. “Unless you guys have other plans.”  
  
Turtle speaks without thinking. “No,” he says, “no other plans. We, yeah, let’s go, tonight. The four of us.”  
  
“Great,” Monica says. “Seven?”  
  
“Uh,” Turtle says, and then, because Vince looks incapable of speech, “I guess, yeah, that’s cool.”  
  
Vince kisses her cheek as they leave. In the car, he says, “What the fuck, man?”  
  
Turtle shakes his head. “This is all you,” he says. “You want to turn a girl down after buying a guy a ring? You know what that looks like? And you’re making eyes at me, fuck.”  
  
Vince shrugs. “I thought you were covering pretty well,” he says.  
  
“Yeah, well, you need all the fucking cover you can get.” He shakes his head. “How do you survive as an actor? And don’t fucking laugh, man.”  
  
“Wait until E hears you set me up with a girl,” Vince says.  
  
“Wait until E hears he’s my boyfriend, now,” Turtle says.  
  
E is just getting out of his car when they pull in. “Hey, guys, where you been?” he asks.   
  
Turtle shoves the ring box into his pocket. “Shopping,” he says, shortly.  
  
“Yeah, guess what, E?” Vince says as they walk into the house. “You’ve got a date tonight.”  
  
E turns. “Does that mean I’m paying for pizza?”  
  
Turtle shakes his head. The ring is still in his pocket, and it makes him realize he can’t tell E exactly what happened without giving Vince’s gift away. “I hate you,” he says, looking at Vince.  
  
“But you love E.”  
  
“What is going on?”  
  
Turtle sighs. “We were — out, and I had to improvise, and the short story is you and I are going on a double date with Vince and the jewelry store girl tonight.”  
  
“You and I,” E says. “We’re going on a date.”  
  
“This can’t be any more uncomfortable for you than it is for me,” Turtle says, and Vince laughs.  
  
“He’s telling the truth, E,” Vince says. “I got backed into a corner by this girl, I said something stupid and Turtle rescued me.”  
  
“It’s not like a real date,” Turtle says.  
  
“No kidding,” E says, “because there’s zero chance of action for you at the end of the night.” Vince snickers, and E glares at him. “It’s not looking too good for you, either, pal,” he says, and Vince sobers up.  
  
“E, come on, please? Just to make sure this girl doesn’t get too curious. We get drinks, we get dinner, we call it a night.”  
  
E raises an eyebrow. “You think she’s going to be happy just with dinner?”  
  
“I’ll fake a headache or something,” Vince says. “The important part is she sees you and Turtle.”  
  
E rubs his forehead. “This is a fucking nightmare,” he says, but something about his voice sounds more like the old E: worried about Vince’s career, worried about business. Active. OK. Not zombie-like.  
  
“It won’t be that bad,” Turtle says. “I know I’m no Vince, but, Jesus, E —”  
  
“All right, fine,” E says. “But Jesus Christ, you guys never get to leave the house without an adult ever again.”  
  
“Noted,” Vince says. E turns toward the kitchen, and Vince holds out his hand to Turtle.  
  
“You’re going to give it to him now?” Turtle asks.  
  
Vince shrugs. “No time like the present. Plus, he should maybe wear it at dinner, huh?”  
  
Turtle rolls his eyes and hands it over, and Vince claps his shoulder before he walks down the hall after E. Turtle retires to the living room and turns on the Wii. A couple of hours of video game playing and a well-packed bong should make the morning’s embarrassment fade a little.   
  
Drama calls in the afternoon to see what they’re up to. Turtle tells him, expecting laughter.  
  
“Jesus, why E?” he says. “I can act gay. I am an actor.”  
  
“You want the whole world thinking you’re gay?” Turtle asks. “Vince Chase’s gay brother, that’s gonna be good for your résumé.”  
  
“All right, good point,” Drama says. “But it would’ve been nice to be asked.”  
  
“You’re a fucking freak, Drama,” Turtle says, and hangs up. With his hand still on the phone, he starts to wonder if he’s just somehow outed himself. Will Monica tell her friends? Well, of course she will, he realizes, and he shivers. Shit, he thinks, shit shit shit. As if it wasn’t already hard enough getting a girl in L.A.  
  
E walks in, wearing black slacks and a gray button-down shirt. “You better put on something nice for me,” he says, buttoning his cuffs. Turtle catches the glint of his ring.  
  
“E,” Turtle says, and E looks up. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”  
  
“What’s the deal now?” E asks.  
  
“This is — this will out you,” he says, slowly.  
  
E shrugs. “To the jewelry store girl,” he says. “Not like I’m on the market, anyway. Plus Ari’s called me a cocksucker in half the restaurants in L.A.”  
  
“So you don’t care,” Turtle says. “People are gonna think you’re gay, you don’t care?”  
  
“I care more that they don’t think Vince is,” E says. He crosses his arms. “Wait, you worried about what people will think of you?” Turtle shrugs, and E rolls his eyes. “She already thinks you’re gay,” he says. “Too late now. And if she’s the girl I remember, you don’t have a chance there, either.”  
  
Well, that’s a fair point. Though, she was pretty nice to him at the store. Maybe this can work in his favor, a little. Turtle can’t pretend to know what’s going to make a girl interested. “Yeah, all right,” he says.  
  
“And I’m serious, wear a shirt with fucking buttons,” E says, and Turtle gets up. He showers, puts on cologne, styles his hair, and changes into the Joseph Abboud pants and collared Armani shirt he picked up the last time he went to the outlets with Drama. When he walks out, Vince wolf-whistles, and Turtle flips him off.  
  
“Our boy goes gay with style,” Vince says, one arm slung around E’s shoulders.  
  
“How come he gets to dress down?” Turtle asks. Vince isn’t wearing jeans, at least, but his green shirt has no buttons, and his hair is sloppy as always.  
  
“He bought me jewelry,” E says. “Plus straight guys don’t even have to match. You should know. Come on.”  
  
E rides up front with Turtle, Vince in the back, as they drive to Café Calais to meet Monica. As they pull up to the valet stand, Monica is standing near the entryway. She’s wearing a short black dress and very high heels, and Turtle whistles low just seeing her — and seeing so much of her. E says, “Swear to god, Vince, you touch that girl and I’ll cut off your balls.”  
  
As they get out of the car, Vince turns to Turtle with a mischievous look. “That goes for you, too, man,” he says as they walk up behind E. “Hands off.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Turtle says, and then he stands next to E while Vince greets Monica with a kiss on the cheek.   
  
Turtle gets a similar greeting and a little wink, and then Vince says, “Do you remember Eric, my manager?”  
  
“Oh sure,” she says, and leans in for a kiss. “I’ve heard a lot about you today,” she says to E.  
  
“Yeah? Anything good?”  
  
“Very,” she says. Her voice drops, maybe in deference to the maitre de who’s greeting Vince. “Your boyfriend really likes you.”  
  
Eric laughs, a fake laugh that still works on Monica. Turtle glances around to see if anyone’s listening. “You think, huh?”  
  
He feels like maybe he’s standing too close to E, suddenly, even though there’s more space between them than there is between Turtle and Vince. The crowd near the hostess stand is pretty tightly packed, so that Turtle has to scoot in right behind E to follow their group through. He keeps his hands firmly at his sides.   
  
They’re seated in a booth, and E stands at the end and says, all false courtesy, “After you,” to Turtle. Turtle grits his teeth when E touches his back as he slides into the booth. It’s not even a particularly gay move, it’s just E being E, herding everyone around, mother-henning them all, but Jesus. Turtle scoots to the far, far end, and when he looks up Vince is glaring at him. He tilts his head just a bit to his left, Turtle’s right, and Turtle reluctantly scoots closer to E. There’s about six inches of space between them, now, which is seven more than what’s between Vince and Monica. This should be fun, Turtle thinks. E’s knee is bouncing spastically under the table.  
  
“So happy anniversary,” Monica says, leaning across the table. That’s nice, good view of her rack — which of course isn’t supposed to interest him.  
  
E says, “What?” and Turtle elbows him.  
  
“It’s cool, man, she knows, remember?” Vince says, and E nods fast.  
  
“Oh, yeah, uh, sorry,” he says.  
  
“We’re pretty used to keeping things under wraps,” Turtle adds, and Monica gives him a friendly, sympathetic smile.  
  
“That’s terrible,” she says. “Really.” When she leans back, her bare arm is against Vince’s. “You like the ring, though? That certainly makes a statement.”  
  
Eric’s hands are folded on the table, and Turtle looks over, realizes the ring is on E’s ring finger, not the left hand but hey, close enough. He swallows and can’t meet Vince’s eyes, can’t really even look at E. This is so fucked up. “It’s pretty cool,” E says. “I’m not much for jewelry, usually, but this is a little different.”  
  
“It’s a special piece,” Monica says, nodding.  
  
“It’s got some meaning,” Vince says.  
  
Turtle glances over as E nods. He realizes he should do something here, maybe touch E or say something, but he can’t. He just can’t. It’s not Turtle E’s talking about or thinking about; there’s no meaning in that ring for them. “I hear you helped out with this,” E says, and then Turtle looks over at Monica.  
  
“Actually, you should thank Vince,” she says. “He has a good eye.”  
  
Vince shrugs. “Turtle knew what he wanted,” he says, smiling at Turtle and then quickly over at E.  
  
“That right?”  
  
“Yeah, uh, I just wanted a second opinion,” Turtle says, looking over at the amused little smirk on E’s face.  
  
“And I said, after all the shit that guy makes you put up with, it’s the least he can do,” Vince says. He’s looking right at E, and E’s blushing.  
  
“He’s not so bad,” E says. “Really, he’s a pussycat.”   
  
Turtle clears his throat, in case the guys have forgotten there’s an audience. “You calling me a pussy, baby?” Turtle says, and Vince laughs and looks away, and the weird moment is over.  
  
“No, sweetheart,” E says, his voice terse and exaggerated. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”  
  
“Monica!” A man in an expensive suit stops at the end of their table. “I’m so glad you’re here, wonderful to see you, my dear.”  
  
Monica leans over Vince to let the guy kiss her hand. “Vince, this is Marc, L.A.’s most brilliant sommelier,” she says. “And Marc, this is Vincent Chase, his manager, Eric, and his friend Turtle.”  
  
“Pleased to meet you all,” Marc says, shaking hands.  
  
Monica’s snuggled up to Vince’s side in a way that makes Turtle a little uncomfortable. She says, “Eric and Turtle are celebrating their anniversary,” and Marc tips his head and looks at them. Turtle flinches, then tries to make up for it by putting his hand on E’s turned shoulder.  
  
“Well, congratulations,” Marc says.  
  
“Thanks,” Turtle says.  
  
Marc seems to recover a bit from his surprise, and says, “Well, you must let me send over some champagne, certainly.”  
  
“We’d enjoy that,” E says, and Turtle wonders if he’s imagining it or if E really is speaking through clenched teeth.  
  
“Of course, of course.” A waiter approaches and taps Marc on the shoulder, and after a brief conference Marc says, “I’ll check back in. But Tony, here, will make sure you have a spectacularly romantic evening.”  
  
Turtle has to make himself smile. He’s pretty sure the jolt he feels is Vince kicking E. E, for his part, leans back a bit against Turtle’s arm, and they stay frozen like that until Tony has taken their orders.  
  
When the champagne arrives, E leans forward and raises a glass. “To romance,” he says, and though he’s looking at Turtle, Vince’s is the first glass he clinks.  
  
Things get a little easier from there. They order, they bandy about stories from Vince’s recent film, from the past, kid stories, weird stuff. Monica asks a few questions — “So you two have really been together for a long time?” — and Turtle mostly lets E take the lead. He makes an effort to look right at E when he’s talking, stays sitting closer than he feels comfortable with, and gives the waiter a glare when they keep getting weird looks. He can sense E getting a little annoyed, and maybe Vince can, too, because halfway through his meal, he snaps backward, suddenly, and clutches his mouth.  
  
“Fuck,” Vince mutters, his eyes so wide with pain that Turtle drops his fork.  
  
“What’s wrong?” he asks, at the same time Monica does.  
  
“I think I broke a tooth or something,” Vince says, his voice a little slurred. He probes the side of his mouth with a finger and winces. “Jesus, that hurts.”  
  
“You all right?” E asks, but his tone is completely droll.  
  
“Was it something in the food?” Monica asks, her voice pitched high.  
  
Vince shrugs. “Just bit down wrong, I think.”  
  
He drops out of the conversation, then, for a while, and whenever Turtle looks over he’s got his lips pursed, his tongue working in his mouth. Turtle’s starting to wonder if Vince really has broken something. “Vince, you OK?”  
  
“I don’t know,” he says.  
  
Monica puts both hands on his arm, then touches his cheek. “You want to get the check? You look like you’re really hurting.”  
  
“No, we’re having a good time,” Vince protests. “And you guys never go out.”  
  
Turtle has to look away to keep from laughing, because Monica’s concern increases. “Don’t worry about me,” she says, and E says, “Yeah, man, if you’re in pain, let’s go.”  
  
“We can have just as much fun at home,” Turtle says, and Vince breaks his act for just a second to look surprised. “What? Just sayin’.”  
  
E laughs. “All right. Let’s get the check,” he says.  
  
Ten minutes later they’re in the car, and Vince’s mouth is fine except that it’s flapping, making fun of Turtle. “Should I leave you two alone?” he says. “I don’t want to ruin whatever it is you have planned for him tonight, man.”  
  
“That was the most fucking awkward thing I’ve ever done,” Turtle says.  
  
“Yeah,” E says, turning around and looking at Vince. “Pretty fucking awkward, Vince.”  
  
Vince shrugs. “What, it’s not like it would be like that for real.”  
  
E snorts, and Turtle suddenly realizes they’re having some completely different conversation. “Yeah, it’d be ten thousand times weirder,” he says. “Because instead of Monica asking questions and the waiter giving us funny looks, we’d have the whole fucking world watching.”  
  
“Are you guys talking about coming out?” Turtle asks.  
  
“No,” E says.  
  
“Maybe,” Vince says.  
  
“Jesus.” Turtle turns the car onto the freeway. “Seriously?”  
  
“No,” E says, and his voice is heavy and a little angry and very final. Turtle watches Vince huff in the back seat, his arms crossed.   
  
He clears his throat. “But eventually,” Turtle says.  
  
“Yeah,” Vince says. “Exactly. Eventually, E. We aren’t going to play the game forever.”  
  
“But we can try,” he says.  
  
They don’t talk any more about it, but Turtle picks up on the weird tension and tries to compensate by talking about other things: Drama’s new job possibility, Arnold’s upcoming vet appointment, all the regular stuff. When they get home, Vince goes right to bed, but E detours to the living room and ends up watching the last half of  _Apocalypse Now_ and smoking up with Turtle. As the credits roll, Turtle looks over at him and says, “Hey, uh, I’m sorry, man.”  
  
E’s eyes narrow just a little. “What’d you do?”  
  
“No, I mean — like, it’s so hard,” Turtle says, shaking his head. “Man. I get it, I mean, I get it a little, it’s gotta be fucking hard, for you guys.”  
  
“Oh,” E says. He shrugs and takes another hit. When he lets it out, he says, “That. Yeah. It blows. But it’s, you know, it’s better than the alternative.”  
  
Turtle shrugs. “You sure?”  
  
E looks at him for a second. His eyes are very wide, probably from the pot, but it’s not an unfamiliar expression. He looks like E, circa 1998, just finding out about somebody’s — usually Vince’s — latest conquest, E, wide-eyed, worried, always thinking too much. And then he laughs, at first a high laugh that seems nervous, but it cascades down into actual heavy laughter that leaves him doubled up on the couch.   
  
“What?” Turtle asks, though he can’t help laughing along.  
  
“Fuck, Turtle, I’m not sure of anything,” E says. “You guys always think — fuck,” he says, and he starts laughing again. When he’s settled down, he puts both hands flat on the coffee table and stands up. “Thanks for the date,” he says, and snickers so that Turtle thinks they’re going back to the high fast laughter. “I’m gonna go fuck my movie-star boyfriend.”  
  
Turtle lifts his bong in salute. “Happy anniversary,” he calls, and then starts to laugh a little, himself.


	12. DECEMBER: Breaking News

In the end, it’s not their decision to make, really. Turtle wakes up one morning — well, maybe it’s afternoon, 12:45 by the clock — to the sound of Ari shouting in the living room. He hauls himself out of bed and finds Vince sitting on the bottom step, still wearing his pajama pants, with a crumpled T-shirt pulled on backwards. Turtle takes a seat next to him. He can hear E’s voice, now, hissing at Ari in the living room.  
  
“What’s going on?”  
  
“Page 6 has something,” Vince says. “A blind item, but it’s pretty obvious.” He’s staring straight ahead, and Turtle realizes he doesn’t look so good, kind of pale and wide-eyed.  
  
“About what?”  
  
Vince shrugs. “Somebody outed us.”   
  
Turtle swallows. In the living room, he hears E yell, “You’re fucking with our lives, Ari!”  
  
“Come on,” he says, standing up. “Come on, you need a drink.”  
  
Vince nods loosely and follows Turtle into the kitchen. The yelling is more muted from here, but Vince still looks like someone hit him in the stomach. “So what’s Ari doing?” Turtle asks, pulling glasses down from the cabinets.  
  
“He wants E to move out,” Vince says, falling into a chair at the table. “He says we can still contain it, if there’s nothing to know.” Turtle pulls a bottle of vodka out of the freezer, then pours a little into each of the glasses. Vince looks down at his for a moment, then picks the glass up and shoots it. “He wants me to fire E,” Vince says, wincing, eyes still closed from the liquor.  
  
“Jesus,” Turtle says. He pushes his own glass over, but Vince shakes his head. “What are you going to do?” he asks.  
  
Vince shrugs.  
  
Turtle nods. “You call Drama?”  
  
“No,” Vince says, and Turtle cocks his head to the side. “I think it was my mom,” he says, after a minute. “I think my mom told someone, I think that’s what’s happened.” He swallows and toys with his empty glass. “I haven’t told E.”  
  
“You want me to?” Turtle asks. Vince looks up, and his eyes are still wide. He looks afraid and tired. “Don’t sweat it,” Turtle says. “How long have they been going at it?”  
  
“Forever,” Vince says. “I was in there, but — I needed a break.”  
  
“Yeah, I can see that,” Turtle says. “Listen, you wanna go back to bed or something? You look pretty rough.”  
  
Vince shrugs, but then he nods. “Maybe I should,” he says. Turtle stands up, and Vince does, too, and Turtle watches him walk down the hall and close the door to his bedroom. Then he turns toward the living room, takes a deep breath, and walks in.  
  
Ari and E are on opposite sides of the room, as if circling each other in some kind of duel. E’s fists are clenched, and so are Ari’s, and it’s probably a good idea that there’s so much space between them. Turtle steps into the center of the room and says, “You two better fucking sit down.”  
  
It surprises him when they both do it, but then he looks at E and sees the same kind of panic and exhaustion on his face. They’re both probably running on indignation, frustration, and fear. Turtle shakes his head. “You figure out who said what, yet?”  
  
“Nobody said anything,” Ari says, his voice gritty. “They were fucking seen. E couldn’t keep his motherfucking hands off -”  
  
“I told you,” E says, sounding much more tired than angry, “we never, ever, nowhere in public -”  
  
“E’s right,” Turtle says.   
  
Ari snorts. “Then what’s your fucking theory, Turtle? Because everyone who knows is either here or Drama.”  
  
“It was Vince’s mom,” Turtle says, watching E as he says it. His head snaps up, and his eyes go wide.  
  
“What?” he says, voice breathy, disbelieving. Ari says the same, but with a sharper tone.  
  
Turtle takes a seat on the couch. “She found out when we were back for your mom’s funeral,” Turtle says, and E keeps staring at him in complete disbelief.   
  
“Vince never said -” E starts, and Turtle nods.  
  
“She didn’t take it so well.”  
  
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Ari mutters. “You think she’d talk to the Post?”  
  
Turtle shrugs. “Probably not on purpose. She probably said something to someone, who said something — you know how it is.”  
  
“No, I don’t know,” Ari says, “because no one fucking tells me anything.” But his voice is quieter, and he’s shaking his head. “Jesus,” he says. “That’s gonna make damage control a little harder.”  
  
Turtle keeps looking at E. He looks bewildered, and sad, and a little scared. “You oughtta check on Vince,” Turtle says, making his voice as gentle as he can. “He went back to bed.”  
  
E nods and stands up. Ari says, “Eric, we aren’t done,” but E waves him off and walks out.  
  
It’s just Ari and Turtle. “You really think Vince would ever leave him?” he says.  
  
“If he knew what was best for him,” Ari says, but there’s not much conviction in his voice. “Motherfucker,” he says, almost a sigh, and presses his fist to mouth. When he pulls it back, he shakes his head. “All right. I can — I can deal with this. I can make this work. You tell E he better keep his motherfucking phone on, all right?”  
  
“Yeah,” Turtle says, and he watches Ari leave. Down the hall, he can hear yelling from Vince’s bedroom, and it sounds like it might be Vince’s voice. Turtle takes a seat on the couch, and decides that this is probably what it feels like when the world’s crumbling around you.  
  


* * *

  
  
Ari is true to his word. Shauna unleashes some kind of press bomb and the story dies that night. In its place, there’s a story about Vince being estranged from his mother, and Turtle feels uncomfortable just reading about that, even though it’s true. He can see that Vince doesn’t like it, either; in fact, after Ari’s visit, Vince doesn’t leave his bedroom for a full day. E doesn’t leave the house, either — there are two high-end cars parked on the street outside, now, each with a telephoto lens poking out the window — so Turtle runs a few errands for him in the afternoon, the day after Ari came over. When he gets back, he drops his keys on the side table by the door and looks around for the guys. He sees E sitting with his back against the closed bedroom door, his elbows on his knees. Turtle starts to back into the living room, to act like he hasn’t seen him, but then decides that’s a pussy move. So he goes to the bar, gets two glasses of scotch, and walks over to sit next to E.  
  
E takes the glass and looks over at him, surprised. “What’s up?” he asks.  
  
Turtle shrugs. “You all right?”  
  
“I don’t know,” he says. “This is all pretty fucked up.”  
  
“Vince OK?”  
  
He shrugs, then takes a sip of his scotch. “Basically he’s just sleeping a lot,” he says. “Fucking great strategy.”  
  
“Has he tried calling Rita?”  
  
E shakes his head. “I tried, though,” he says, and Turtle raises an eyebrow. “You know what she said? She said, ‘I have nothing to say to you, Eric.’” He laughs, then drains his glass. “I said, Vince thinks you leaked this, he thinks you ruined his career, he thinks you hate him. And she said, ‘Your mother would be ashamed,’ and she hung up on me.”  
  
“Jesus Christ, E,” Turtle says, and he puts his hand on E’s shoulder.  
  
“Ari won’t return my calls,” he says. “Lloyd told me he’s been on the phone with Hood, talking about the Oscar campaign. I can’t even leave the house, so it’s not like I can help. And where the fuck is Drama?”  
  
“I told him to stay home,” Turtle says. “Vince said -”  
  
“Fuck that,” E says. “Tell him to come over. Maybe Vince will eat something if he cooks.”  
  
Turtle nods. “You want me to talk to him?”  
  
“You can try,” E says.  
  
Turtle takes the glass back, then stands up and offers a hand to help E to his feet. “Come on,” he says, and E squints at him. Turtle shakes his hand, and E finally takes it and stands. “I’m gonna smoke you up until this all seems funny.”  
  
“Whatever,” E says, but he looks grateful. He also looks exhausted, which is probably why it only takes a single, albeit fat, joint before he’s curled up on the couch, a pillow against his chest, drooling peacefully. Turtle watches him for a moment, then takes another joint and heads for Vince’s room.  
  
The bedroom door isn’t locked, so he lets himself in. Vince is sprawled over the bed, laying on his stomach, a pillow snuggled under his arm. Turtle considers going out and getting E, just tucking him in next to Vince and calling that his good deed for the day, but he decides he should probably actually talk. So he turns on the lights and closes the door, then switches on the stereo.  
  
“Mm?” Vince rolls over. “Jesus, Turtle,” he groans. “The fuck? I’m sleeping.”  
  
“Huh-uh. You’re done. No one sleeps this much.”  
  
Vince closes his eyes, like this is an answer. It’s not gonna fly. Not today, not like this. E’s passed out on the fucking couch, the least Vince can do is pretend to care. Being a movie star doesn’t give him special privileges, not here, and Turtle’s tired of him not remembering that. He was the one, after all, who was so keen for everyone to know about them.  
  
Turtle grabs a CD case off the nearest bookshelf and zings it at Vince, frisbee-style, so that it connects with his shoulder. “Ow!” Vince yelps. After the second case, and he erupts out of bed, clutching his shoulder, swinging his legs up so he’s sitting with one knee up. “What the fuck?”  
  
“You need to cut this prima-donna depressive bullshit out right now,” Turtle says. “E is having just as bad a day as you, man.”  
  
Vince rolls his eyes. “What are you talking about, Turtle?”  
  
“Get dressed,” Turtle says. “Get dressed, come out to the kitchen, eat something. Be a fucking human being, at least.”  
  
Vince blinks at him, and Turtle keeps staring until Vince nods. “And I’m gonna call Drama,” Turtle says as Vince gets out of the bed.  
  
“Whatever,” Vince says, but he stumbles into the bathroom. Turtle hears the shower turn on as he walks toward the kitchen, phone already open.  
  
“Drama,” Turtle says. “Get over here, man. And bring whatever you need to make some serious comfort food.”  
  
“On my way,” Drama says.  
  
Drama makes chicken cacciatore for dinner. Vince eats at the table, but E’s still asleep on the couch. It surprises Turtle when Vince doesn’t go in to talk to him or sit by him or anything. Instead, he eats and then he gets up and looks like he’s going back to his bed. Turtle stops him at the door. “Let’s hit the pool.”  
  
Vince shrugs. They haven’t talked about the gossip or the story about his mother. In fact, he’s hardly talking at all, just kind of staring down at his food and nodding when Drama needs feedback. It’s the same thing poolside; Vince sits with his drink, sips it, stares at the water. Turtle finally says, “What the fuck, Vince?”  
  
“What?” he asks.  
  
Turtle shakes his head. “What’s the deal? The story’s killed.”  
  
Vince nods. “Yeah, but it’s only dead for now,” he says.  
  
“Uh, yeah, but you knew that. You always knew that,” he says. “Last month, you were all gung ho.”  
  
“Yeah,” Vince says. “I know.” He rubs his face. “I just, I guess I thought -” He stops. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet. “I thought we’d have some choice. Some control.”  
  
“Maybe you will, still,” Turtle says.  
  
Vince takes a shuddery breath. “Ari thinks I should fire E,” he says. “He says, E moves out, we spend a little time apart, the rumors will die and then, if we want, we can go back and control things.” Vince looks up, a question in his eyes, and for once there’s no E around to tell him what’s what.  
  
“Oh, huh-uh,” Turtle says. “No fucking way are you even thinking about that. You’re gonna fire him, make him move out, and break up with him, just so that maybe later on you can break the story your way? That’s fucking sick, Vince,” Turtle says. “Jesus, no wonder he’s fucked up.”  
  
“What’s going on?” Drama asks, climbing out of the pool.  
  
Turtle stands up. Vince has his head in his hands. “Your brother’s talking about putting his career before his boy,” he says. “Fucking stupid.”  
  
“What’s the deal?” Drama asks, sitting next to Vince. Vince explains, and Turtle holds his breath. He knows Vince really just needs a little push in the right direction, here; he hopes he doesn’t get a kick the wrong way.  
  
Drama lets out a low whistle. “That’s fucked up,” he says. “Ari’s one Machiavellian bastard.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Vince asks.  
  
“I’m saying, it’s in his best interest, always has been, for you to fire E. For you to get rid of him in all his many roles.” Drama shrugs, and Vince’s eyes narrow.  
  
“No way,” he says. “Ari’s just trying to help. He’s trying to get things back to how they were. What’s wrong with wanting things to go back?”  
  
“Because you already made this decision,” Turtle says. He sits back down so he’s on eye-level with Vince. “That kid fucking loves you,” he says. “And messed up as it is, you fucking love him back.”  
  
Vince puts his head down again. “I just need to think,” he says. “OK, guys? This is my life.”  
  
Turtle scoffs. “Not just yours,” he says. He gets up from the chair and hears Drama following.  
  
Inside, E is awake, sitting at the kitchen table, head down much like Vince’s. Drama pats his shoulder. “Lemme heat up the chicken,” he says, and E nods. He looks like a guy on the morning after a three-day bender.  
  
Turtle sits across from him. E props his head up. “Vince is freaking out, huh?” he says. Turtle nods. “Thing is, I knew this would happen. I knew it. I knew from the beginning, from the time —” he stops. “We got caught,” he says, after a moment, voice so low that Turtle can barely hear him over the hum of the microwave. He’s sure Drama’s not catching the story.  
  
“When?”  
  
“High school,” E says. “Just once. Stupid. We were messing around, and these guys saw us and yelled and threw some shit at us. At the car. Called us fags.” E shakes his head. “I’ve been thinking it’d be like that since day one. And just when I start to think, you know, maybe it won’t be, maybe things could be OK, just when Vince is starting to work on me that we should — the shit hits, and he loses his nerve.”  
  
Turtle shakes his head. “You know,” he says, “I can’t picture you together in high school.”  
  
“We weren’t really -” E starts, and Turtle waves him off.  
  
“The thing is, though, I’m pretty used to you guys, now,” he says. “I can’t picture you not together.” It surprises him even as he says it, but it’s true. The last year has taught him a lot, he figures, if he can say that and mean it. Vince makes E happy and vice-versa, in a cool, easy way like Turtle’s not used to. It’s not the relationship that his parents had, it’s not a relationship like what Turtle’s looking for, but it’s real and it’s good. It’s actually excellent.  
  
E smirks, but it fades after a second into something like a real smile. “Thanks,” he says.  
  
He eats some of his chicken, and then they go to the living room and Drama turns on the TV and they watch a cooking show. During the middle commercial break, the deck door opens and Vince walks into the living room. He pauses in the doorway, and Turtle looks up, then over to see that E’s looking at him, too.  
  
Vince purses his lips, then steps into the room, walks to the couch, and sinks down next to E. He puts his head on E’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Turtle hears E sigh. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
“Me, too,” E says.  
  
“I thought I’d be ready,” Vince murmurs. “But man, this happened fast.”   
  
E puts his arm around Vince. “We’ll get through this,” he says, and Turtle doesn’t look away when Vince tilts up to kiss E. Instead, he leans in, claps them both on the shoulders.  
  
“Nothing we can’t do,” he says, and everyone smiles.


	13. Epilogue: The Big Show

Turtle doesn’t have to rent a tux, this time; Vince buys them all nice ones, Dolce for Turtle, Ralph Lauren for Drama, and vintage Armani for himself. E doesn’t get a new tux, though he goes along to the fittings, because he’s not going to the Globes. Watching him watch Vince as he struts around in his tailored tuxedo, Turtle thinks maybe Ari has a point about this one.  
  
They haven’t been outed officially, though the rumors keep circulating. It’s still Vince and E and Turtle in the house — E hasn’t moved out, he’s still Vince’s manager, but they’re being a little more careful. Turtle’s not sure where the pressure’s coming from on that, though neither of the guys really complains about it. Turtle drives Vince to meetings, now, instead of Vince traveling solo with E; Vince isn’t taking a date to the Globes, but E is staying home. Not exactly a perfect tradeoff — Turtle feels bad for E, actually, because he seems to like these industry get-togethers — but everyone seems OK with it.  
  
The morning of the Globes, Turtle goes with Drama while he gets a last-minute manicure. He’s not nominated for anything, but someone from his new show is — best supporting actress in a drama. “It’s important I represent the show in every respect,” he says.   
  
“Can they even dye your eyes to match your gown?” Turtle asks, but soft enough that Drama doesn’t hear it.  
  
They get back to the house and find Vince and E on the couch, making out. “Jesus,” Drama says, “what is this, high school?”  
  
One of E’s hands emerges from under Vince’s shirt, on his back, and flips Drama off. Turtle laughs. “Come on, Vin, it’s time to get ready,” he says.  
  
Vince surfaces kind of slowly. He doesn’t turn away from E, just rests his forehead on E’s for a minute and they whisper, and Turtle feels like he’s really interrupted something intimate. Vince is always clingy, but it’s unusual for E to encourage him. Maybe he’s misread the entire situation. Maybe things aren’t as cool as he thinks. He grabs Drama by the arm and tugs him into the hallway.  
  
“What?” he says.  
  
“Just get ready, man,” Turtle says. He climbs up to his own room and does as he’s been saying. He doesn’t have a date for the evening, either, but he plans to find at least one someone at an after party. He wonders if E’s going to join for those, and then has a sudden sinking feeling that maybe Vince will want to cut out early. Shit, he thinks, and hopes Drama’s fifteen minutes will get him in the doors.  
  
When he gets downstairs, E is still lying on the couch but Vince is gone. “Hey.”  
  
E turns, then smirks. “Hey, nice suit,” he says. “If that doesn’t get you laid, man, nothing’s gonna.”  
  
“Please remember I’ll be in close proximity to Drama all night,” Turtle says, and E laughs. “Hey, you really all right with this all?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s fine,” E says. “You know how long it’s been since I had the house to myself?”  
  
“Don’t jerk off on the good pillows, all right?”  
  
Drama joins pretty soon, and a minute after that, Vince walks out. Jesus, but he looks like a movie star, his hair wavy and loose over his black tux and black shirt. His shoes shine like Drama’s nails.  
  
“Limo should be here,” Drama says. “E, make sure you TiVo.”  
  
“No problem,” E says. He doesn’t lift off the couch at all, just waves; Vince bends to kiss him good-bye. “Don’t you come back early, either!” he calls out, and Vince laughs.  
  
They have a table in the front section, which Turtle wants to consider a good sign. He’s been checking the odds online all day: Vince has 3:1 odds to win Best Actor in a Drama, while Leo DiCaprio is running 2:1. Turtle actually thinks Eric Bana is the guy to beat, mostly because he’s heard E say it.  
  
He’s discouraged to see who’s at their table: Ari, his wife, Gavin Hood and his wife, and Vera Farmiga. She would usually be a bright spot, but she has not only her PA boyfriend with her but also her mother. Also, he gets stuck sitting next to Ari, because Vince won’t do it.  
  
The awards themselves are exciting because Turtle has money riding on almost everything. The woman from Drama’s cast wins and Drama whoops a big New York yell that’s actually echoed by at least one other guy. Vera wins best supporting in a drama, and Turtle should make $400 on that.  
  
In between presentations, people bob around, they congratulate each other, they gossip and fawn. Vince doesn’t move around much, and Turtle realizes he’s text messaging during one commercial break. “E?” he asks, and Vince nods, just once, before glancing over to see if Ari’s watching. Ari’s too busy kissing Spielberg’s ass.  
  
Finally, Cate Blanchett comes up to announce Best Actor. Turtle’s nervous. He almost bet on Vince, then decided it was bad luck, a jinx, particularly if he didn’t split the winnings. So he’s got nothing riding on this except wanting to see Vince succeed, and he’s more nervous than he was for the $1000 he had riding on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” for best comedy.  
  
Thing is, it’s a good movie and a great performance. Turtle’s seen enough to know that on his own; he’s heard enough buzz about it to believe people have noticed. E holds this movie up like it’s the golden ticket, and Turtle thinks he’s right to do it. This is  _Queens Boulevard_  without foreknowledge of Queens to lean on — in this movie, Turtle knows Vince is acting, though Vince makes it look easy. He thinks the guy deserves an award just for that.  
  
And he gets it. Cate reads the names and then opens the envelope and says, “Vincent Chase!” and Turtle leaps up. Vince is still in his chair, looking a little shell-shocked. He moves back slowly, then stands, and Drama whoops even as he hugs him. Then Vince hugs Turtle, and Turtle says, “I knew it, man, you fucking go and get it!” and Vince laughs and claps him on the back. There’s a hug with Ari and then Vince jogs up to the stage. People are still clapping, and it takes Turtle a second to realize that he should sit down.  
  
Vince holds the Globe in his right hand and says, “Wow, this is — amazing. I’m totally stunned.” He grins his big movie-star grin. “Ah, I need to thank some people. Brian Monticore, for getting this project started. Gavin Hood, a fabulous director, really the heart and soul of the project. Ann Turner at Universal for pushing this, Jim Levin for seeing it through. Everyone on the cast, Vera, Tim, Chris, Benny, Everett, Lisa, Laurie. The crew, who was great, fantastic, the costumers, Mark and Michael. Um, my agent, the incomparable and fierce Ari Gold; my publicist, the equally fierce Shauna Mitchell; my guys, my friends, everyone from back home but mostly my brother, Johnny Chase, and my other brother, basically, Turtle.” Turtle grins and nods. “And — OK, I’ve got one more person to thank, someone who couldn’t be here, tonight. Trust me, you don’t want to start the music.”  
  
“Oh dear God,” Ari whispers, his hand clutching the tablecloth. The smile on his face stays put perfectly.  
  
“There’s been, uh, some stuff written about me, recently, some of it not so nice, some of it not so true. So I wanted to set the record straight, and this seems like a good time to do it, on a network dime.” There’s a bit of nervous laughter; Turtle expects the music to come up any second. But maybe they don’t do that at the Globes. “So who I want to thank, I want to thank Eric Murphy, who’s my manager and my best friend since forever, a guy who moved three thousand miles to make sure I wouldn’t make a fucking fool of myself. And he’s not here tonight because people have been printing that we’re maybe lovers, so give me one second to set the record straight: we are, we absolutely are, and we have been forever. E, I love you, man, and I’m coming straight home after this so we can celebrate. Thank you.”  
  
There’s a flush of silence followed immediately by cheering; people get on their feet and Turtle joins them. He almost doesn’t notice that Ari’s still sitting, and he thinks maybe Ari hasn’t noticed, either, so he nudges him with his fist to Ari’s shoulder. Ari springs up. “That’s my boy!” he crows, suddenly, like it’s a recorded yell of victory. “My fucking star!”  
  
Vince comes back after the next commercial break, and he gets stopped by just about everyone in the room, congratulating him, it seems, though Turtle can’t tell on what. When Vince sits down, he’s glowing. He looks at them and says, “What do you think?”  
  
“You got the clip of the night, bro,” Johnny says, and Vince laughs.  
  
“You talk to E?” Turtle asks. “I mean, beforehand?”  
  
Vince’s smiles just gets wider, which Turtle wouldn’t have thought possible. “He knew,” he says. “Or, I think so — I don’t know if he thought I’d go through with it.” He fishes in his pockets.  
  
“You had this planned?” Ari whispers across Turtle. “Forget about giving E some warning, what about me?”  
  
Vince rolls his eyes. “Settle down, Ari. You had advanced notice, remember?” Vince slides his cell phone to Turtle, and Turtle reads the text message on the screen. It’s from E.  
  


  
_Love u 2. MORON._   
_Hurry home._   


  
  
Ari excuses himself to talk to Shauna, Vince hunches up to text E, and Drama tries to catch the eye of some director who’s hovering close to Vince. Turtle takes a sip of his champagne and settles back in his seat. He is, as always, content just to watch.


End file.
